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Mr.  Savage's  Books. 


These  Degenerate  Days.    Small  i6mo.     Flexible    .    .    .     .    $o.  50 

My  Creed.     12  mo oo 

Poems.     i6mo.     Full  gilt.     With  portrait 
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Bluffton:  A  Story  of  To-day.     (Out  of  print.) 

The  Minister's  Hand-book.     For  Christenings,  Weddings, 

and  Funerals.     Cloth 75 

Sacred  Songs  for  Public  Worship.      A  Hymn  and  Tune 

Book.     Edited  by  M.  J.  Savage  and  Howard  M.  Dow. 

Cloth i.oo 

Leather 1.50 


Mr.  Savage's  weekly  sermons  are  regularly  printed  in  pamphlet 
form  in  "  Unity  Pulpit."  Subscription  price,  for  the  season,  $1.50 ; 
single  copies,  5  cents. 

GEO.  H.  ELLIS,  Publisher, 

141  Franklin  St.,  Boston,  Mass. 


/*  JS 


MY    CREED 


BY 


M.   J.   SAVAGE 


(s 


BOSTON 
GEO.  II.  ELLIS,  141   FRANKLIN  STREET 

1887 


COPYRIGHT 

BY  GEORGE  H.  ELLIS 

1887 


Dedication. 


I  DREAM  of  one  to  whom  my  thought  will  speak, 
One  who  will  share  the  hope  that  ever  sings 
The  new-creation  song  of  fairer  things 

That  all  true  souls  in  all  the  ages  seek. 

In  such  a  dream  I  refuge  find  when  weak, 

When  courage  flows  not  from  its  wonted  springs, 
And  all  my  schemes  seem  vain  imaginings 

On  which  the  Fates  their  hard  revenges  wreak. 

To  such  a  one  as  this  I  dedicate 

My  reading  of  time's  forces  and  their  drift, — 

Of  what  I  hold  is  purpose  in  the  maze 
That  makes  the  tangle  of  our  human  fate : 
For  such  a  soul  will  feel  and  help  the  lift 
Of  love  divine  that  bringeth  better  days. 


Ever)-  sensible  man  must  have  a  creed.  He  who  says,  "  I 
have  no  creed,"  or  "  I  don't  believe  in  creeds,"  gives  expression 
to  one  of  two  beliefs:  i.  That  well-grounded  opinions  are  unat- 
tainable; or,  2.  That  the}-  are  unimportant;  and  either  of  these 
opinions  is  itself  a  creed,  though  a  very  poor  one. 


CONTENTS 


I.    OUTGROWING  THE  OLD  BELIEFS, 9 

II.  WHAT  LIGHT  HAVE  WE  TO  GUIDE  us?    ...  28 

III.  RELIGION, 43 

IV.  GOD, 57 

V.     REVELATION, 72 

VI.    Is  THIS  A  GOOD  WORLD? 87 

VII.     MORAL  FOUNDATIONS, 102 

VIII.  COMMUNION  OF  THE  FINITE  WITH  THE  INFI- 
NITE,      117 

IX.    THE  CHURCH, 132 

X.     SALVATION, 145 

XI.  THE  DEBT  OF  RELIGION  TO  SCIENCE,     .    .    .  161 

XII.  IMMORTALITY  AND  MODERN  THOUGHT,  .    .    .  181 


OUTGROWING  THE  OLD  BELIEFS. 


EVERY  religion  implies  a  theology;  that  is,  a  scheme  or 
system  of  thought  underlying  it,  out  of  which  it  springs  and 
which  in  some  general  way,  at  least,  it  matches  part  by  part. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  loose  talk  in  the  modern  world  in 
favor  of  religion  and  against  theology ;  and  it  seems  to  me 
to  imply  only  a  lack  of  clear  thought.  Persons  who  are 
opposing  theology  are  opposing  some  definite  kind  of  the- 
ology. If  they  are  wise,  they  are  not  opposing  theology 
itself.  Every  religion,  with  its  theology,  implies  some  sort 
of  conception  of  the  universe,  and  springs  out  of  a  cosmol- 
ogy to  which  it  is  fitted  in  some  general  way.  No  matter 
whether  the  person  who  holds  his  religious  or  theological 
opinions  has  thought  about  it  or  not,  there  is  underlying  his 
religion  a  theory  of  things  ;  a  certain  way  of  thinking  about 
the  world,  its  origin,  its  nature ;  a  certain  way  of  thinking 
about  God,  his  character,  his  method,  his  purposes ;  a  cer- 
tain way  of  thinking  about  man,  as  to  what  sort  of  being  he 
is,  where  he  came  from,  what  his  destiny  is  likely  to  be. 
Religion,  then,  springs  out  of  and  bases  itself  on  a  cosmol- 
ogy, a  science  of  things.  But,  when  the  question  is  raised 
among  us  to-day  whether  science  is  a  proper  thing  to  refer 
to  in  the  pulpit,  it  seems  to  be  entirely  forgotten  that  the 
very  first  words  of  the  Bible  are  scientific.  It  begins  with 
stating  the  scientific  conception  of  the  universe  which  was 


10 

held  at  that  time,  and  out  of  which  the  religious  thought 
and  emotion  naturally  and  necessarily  sprung. 

It  follows  from  this  that,  when  there  passes  any  great 
change  over  the  scientific  thought  of  men,  there  must  of 
necessity  go  along  with  it  a  corresponding  change  in  theo- 
logical thought  and  religious  feeling.  The  one  must  of  ne- 
cessity draw  after  it  the  other;  that  is,  provided  men  think 
clearly  and  follow  out  the  lines  of  their  thinking. 

There  have  been  great  changes  in  the  religious  concep- 
tions of  the  universe  many  times  in  the  past.  When  Chris- 
tianity superseded  Paganism  as  the  religion  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  it  was  little  less  than  the  creation  of  a  new  world 
of  thought,  of  feeling ;  and,  by  as  much  as  the  old  scientific 
conceptions  of  the  Hebrews  were  adopted  along  with  the 
religion,  it  gave  a  changed  conception  of  the  physical  uni- 
verse, so  that  it  really  created  a  new  world  for  people  to 
live  in.  When  the  American  continent  was  discovered,  it  so 
changed  the  conceptions  of  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
that  they  found  themselves  living  in  what  was  again  prac- 
tically a  new  world.  And  when  the  Ptolemaic  concep- 
tion of  the  universe  gave  place  to  the  Copernican,  once 
more,  in  a  profounder  and  wider-reaching  sense  still,  people 
found  themselves  the  inhabitants  of  a  new  universe.  All 
these  were  great  and  even  fundamental  changes ;  but  we 
to-day  are  passing  through  a  change  profounder,  farther- 
reaching  in  its  results,  than  either  of  these.  It  is  in  the  air. 
We  talk  about  it  lightly,  newspapers  refer  to  it,  magazine 
articles  are  written  about  it;  yet  only  a  few  people  have 
waked  up  to  comprehend  just  how  much  it  means,  and  what 
are  to  be  its  far-reaching  results. 

The  world  we  live  in  to-day  is  a  new  world,  a  world  less 
than  half  a  century  old.  It  is  made  up  of  the  same  sun,  the 
same  stars,  the  same  old  earth ;  and  yet  our  conception  of 


Outgrowing  the  Old  Beliefs  n 

these  is  undergoing  so  radical  a  change  that  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  we  have  a  new  earth,  a  new  sun,  new  stars,  a 
new  God,  a  new  humanity,  a  new  religion,  a  new  church,  a 
new  outlook  for  humanity.  We  may  say  in  language  calm, 
and  yet  without  taking  away  one  jot  or  one  tittle  from  its 
meaning,  what  was  said  by  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Reve- 
lation hundreds  of  years  ago,  "  The  first  heaven  and  the  first 
earth  are  passed  away " ;  and  the  voice  of  the  Eternal  is 
heard,  saying,  "  Behold,  I  make  all  things  new." 

The  scope  of  the  course  of  sermons  upon  which  we  are 
entering  to-day  proposes,  first,  to  deal  with  this  transition,  to 
indicate  some  of  the  main  outlines  of  the  change  from  the 
old  belief  to  the  new  one ;  then,  in  succeeding  sermons,  to 
take  up  and  answer  the  question  as  to  what  we  have  left, 
what  are  the  great  fundamental  beliefs  which,  so  far  as  we 
can  see,  are  so  much  a  part  of  the  nature  of  things  that  they 
are  not  likely  to  be  disturbed  or  to  pass  away.  There  are 
thousands  of  persons  who  are  feeling  the  change  that  is 
going  on,  and  are  wondering  whether  anything  is  going  to 
be  left. 

All  things  seem  in  flux,  in  movement.  As  they  look  on, 
they  become  dizzy;  and  they  mistake  their  own  dizziness  for 
an  unsettled  condition  of  God's  universe.  It  seems  fo  me, 
then,  that  we  can  render  no  better  service  to  men  than  to 
outline  the  change  that  is  going  on,  and  to  see  what  are  the 
great  fundamental,  eternal  principles  that  a're  part  of  the 
universe  itself. 

The  task  of  this  morning  is  to  be  to  outline,  so  far  as  time 
will  permit,  this  change,  this  -transition  from  the  old  world 
to  the  new.  As  I  face  the  question,  there  are  two  methods 
before  me,  one  of  which  I  must  follow.  Shall  I  treat  it  ab- 
stractly, simply  dealing  with  principles,  outlining  the  position 
in  which  the  world  stood  half  a  century  ago,  pointing  out 


12  My  Creed 

some  of  x  the  principal  points  of  change,  and  attempting  to 
indicate  where  the  world  stands,  intellectually  and  spiritually, 
at  this  hour  ?  Shall  I  do  this  ?  Or  shall  I  give  to  this  story 
a  personal  flavor  by  relating  something  of  my  own  expe- 
rience, showing  how  I  left  the  old  and  what  road  I  followed 
in  coming  into  the  new  ?  It  would  seem  somewhat  more  mod- 
est, perhaps,  to  follow  the  first  method ;  but  there  is  always 
an  added  interest  in  that  which  has  about  it  the  flavor  of  per- 
sonal experience.  For  there  is  nothing  in  which  we  are  so 
much  interested  as  in  people, —  what  they  think,  how  they 
feel,  how  the  world  looks  to  them,  which  way  they  are  mov- 
ing. The  difference  is  like  that  which  one  might  follow  in 
indicating  the  course  pursued  in  a  journey  from  one  city  to 
another.  One  might  describe  the  first  city,  tell  how  far  it  is 
to  the  next,  indicate  what  towns  lie  along  the  road,  the  nat- 
ure of  the  country,  the  mountains,  valleys,  streams  that  must 
be  crossed,  and  leave  it  there.  Or  one  may  relate  the  story 
of  his  own  personal  journey  from  one  city  to  the  other, 
stating  how  he  was  impressed  by  what  he  saw,  and  giving 
some  of  the  personal  incidents  that  befell  him  by  the  way. 
It  seems  to  me  plain  that  the  latter  would  be  the  more  inter- 
esting method  of  the  two.  I  trust,  then,  that  I  may  be  ex- 
empted from  any  charge  of  egotism  if  I  choose  the  latter 
method,  when  I  say  that  any  man  who  can  simply  and  plainly 
tell  the  story  of  his  own  religious  experience  in  passing  from 
the  old  faith  into  the  new  is  telling  not  merely  his  own  story, 

—  he  is  telling  the  story  of  thousands  of  others.     But,  if  I 
am  to  treat  it  in  this  way,  there  is  only  one  person's  story 
that  I  am  fitted  to  tell,  the  one  with  which  I  am  acquainted, 

—  my  own. 

You  will  let  me  say  farther  that  I  have  no  sort  of  feeling 
that  the  personal  incidents  of  my  own  experience  are  of  any 
value  in  themselves.  They  only  stand  as  symbols  of  that 


Outgrowing  the  Old  Beliefs  13 

which  we  all  hold  in  common ;  and  so  I  trust  that  you  who 
have  passed  over  substantially  the  same  road  will  be  think- 
ing  not  so  much  of  my  experience  as  of  your  own,  and  of 
the  parallels  that  may  suggest  themselves  along  the  way. 

I  confess  that,  even  after  having  decided  to  follow  this 
method,  as  I  stand  here  and  look  you  in  the  faces,  I  shrink 
from  it,  especially  from  attempting  to  speak  in  this  way. 
I  could  better  read  it,  if  I  had  it  written ;  for,  then,  I  should 
be  able  to  lose  myself  somewhat  in  my  paper,  as  I  cannot 
while  your  eyes  are  facing  me.  But  let  me,  as  simply  as  I 
may,  tell  this  story ;  and  I  shall  weave  into  it  as  little  of  my 
own  personal  experience  as  possible,  and  thus  I  shall  make 
it  as  much  a  story  of  all  men  as  I  am  able  to  do. 

My  father  was  trained  as  a  child  in  the  extremest  form  of 
the  old  Calvinism.  Among  the  earliest  recollections  of  my 
boyhood  is  listening  to  him  as  he  told  about  the  sermons 
which  he  used  to  hear,  and  as  he  spoke  of  the  moral  revolt 
which  he  felt  as  he  listened  to  the  doctrines  of  fore-ordina- 
tion, of  the  total  depravity  of  men,  and  all  that  cast-iron  relig- 
ion, as  of  fate,  in  which  the  souls  of  men  were  held  and  led 
from  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  and  on  into  the  darkness  of  the 
future.  As  soon  as  he  was  able  to  think  and  act  for  himself, 
he  cast  off  this  old  belief ;  and  as  the  best  thing  he  could 
do,  under  the  circumstances,  when  he  was,  as  he  supposed, 
converted,  he  became  a  member  of  the  Free-will  Baptist 
church,  in  open  revolt  against  the  doctrines  of  Calvinism. 
In  his  early  manhood,  however,  he  moved  away  from  the 
town  of  his  birth  to  a  place  where  there  was  no  Free-will 
Baptist  church,  only  a  Methodist  and  Calvinistic  societies. 
Finding  himself  still  in  revolt,  and  in  sympathy  with  this 
doctrine  of  freedom  as  opposed  to  the  old  Calvinistic  ideas, 
he  became  a  member  of  the  Methodist  church.  They,  how- 
ever, held  service  but  once  a  month,  the  town  being  part  of 


14  My  Creed 

a  circuit.  The  other  three  Sundays  we  were  obliged  to  stay 
at  home  or  to  attend  a  Calvinistic  church.  We  generally 
went  to  the  Congregationalist  church  three  Sundays  and  the 
Methodist  the  fourth.  There  were,  however,  class-meetings 
and  prayer-meetings  that  I  remember  attending  frequently 
with  father  and  mother  when  I  was  a  little  boy. 

I  grew  up,  then,  in  the  country,  in  the  midst  of  this  intense 
religious  atmosphere,  without  ever  having  the  question  sug- 
gested as  to  its  divine  authority  and  infallibility.  I  was, 
I  suppose,  and  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  a  "good"  boy. 
I  make  no  claims  on  the  score  of  that,  however.  I  only 
speak  of  it  to  emphasize  the  fact  that,  though  regarding 
myself  and  being  regarded  as  a  good  boy,  in  popular  par- 
lance, I  never  connected  this  with  the  idea  of  salvation  or 
safety  in  another  world.  From  my  earliest  thought  on  the 
subject,  I  grew  up  in  the  unquestioning  belief  that  I  must 
experience  a  "  change  of  heart,"  or  I  could  have  no  hope  of 
salvation  in  the  future  world.  So  all  my  childhood  long, 
as  I  looked  up  at  the  clouds  and  saw  them  drift  across  the 
bright  blue,  as  I  lay  upon  my  back  under  the  trees  and 
watched  the  shadows,  I  dreamed  of  eternity,  I  dreamed  of 
a  very  definite  heaven  only  a  little  way  above  the  sky.  I 
dreamed  of  quite  as  definite  a  hell;  and  I  can  remember 
how  I  used  to  try  to  imagine  eternity  until  my  mind  drooped 
wear}%  as  if  in  a  swoon,  from  the  impossible  task.  I  verily 
believed  if  I  should  happen  to  die,  as  some  of  my  school- 
mates did,  before  my  experiencing  this  change  of  heart,  I 
should  not  be  able  to  enter  the  gates  of  the  city  of  which 
I  dreamed,  but  that  my  destiny  would  lead  me  another  way. 

It  was  natural,  then,  that  I  should  think  very  much  over 
this  matter  of  conversion.  When  the  minister  came  to  call 
on  us,  I  always  expected  that  he  would  talk  to  me  of  the 
safety  of  my  soul ;  and  there  were  friends  of  my  father  and 


Outgrowing  the  Old  Beliefs  15 

mother  who,  faithfully  as  they  believed, —  faithfully,  as  I  be- 
lieve, from  the  stand-point  which  they  occupied, —  took  every 
occasion  to  warn  me  of  the  danger  in  which  I  was  living  from 
day  to  day.  I  do  not  wonder  at  them  as  I  look  back.  I 
rather  wonder  that  there  are  any  men,  women,  or  children 
who  are  themselves  Christians,  who  believe  these  things, 
who  do  not  thus  show  their  interest  in  the  welfare  of  the 
souls  of  others.  So  long  as  the  old  minister  —  the  last  one 
who  was  settled  for  life  in  the  Congregational  parish  —  was 
living,  there  was  no  revival  of  religion,  so  far  as  I  remember. 
But  a  young  minister,  fresh  from  the  seminary,  kindled  with 
enthusiasm,  came  to  be  the  minister  of  the  church ;  and  he 
at  once  set  about  what  I  have  heard  in  the  country  called 
"  getting  up  a  revival  of  religion."  I  believe,  from  his  stand- 
point, he  was  doing  that  which  he  ought  to  have  done.  His 
first  work  was  to  have  a  revival  in  the  church.  He  ap- 
pointed committees  to  visit  the  whole  parish  from  house  to 
house,  he  himself  going  with  them,  talking  and  praying  with 
the  members  of  the  church,  to  rouse  them  to  some  sense  of 
their  duty  and  the  work  which  they  ought  to  be  accomplish- 
ing for  the  salvation  of  their  fellow-men.  I  remember  the 
time  when  he  came  to  our  house,  and  talked  with  us  and 
prayed. 

In  the  winter  following  that  there  was  a  revival  of  religion ; 
and  large  numbers  of  people  were  added  to  the  membership 
of  the  church.  During  the  winter  of  1855  there  was  one 
of  the  most  wide-spread  revivals  of  religion  with  which  I 
have  ever  been  acquainted.  It  swept  —  so  far  as  I  knew, 
then  —  from  North  to  South,  and  from  East  to  West.  There 
was  an  intense  religious  feeling  and  religious  activity  in  our 
town.  Hardly  a  man,  woman,  or  child  who  was  not  touched 
by  it,  either  by  sympathy  or  opposition.  I  made  up  my 
mind  at  that  time,  as  large  numbers  of  my  friends  and 


1 6  My  Creed 

schoolmates  had  become  members  of  the  church,  that  this 
was  the  time  for  me  to  experience  this  change,  if  possible. 
There  were  not  only  preaching  services  on  Sunday,  and 
Sunday-school,  the  main  work  of  which  was  to  convert  chil- 
dren, but  Sunday  evening  prayer-meeting  and  several  prayer- 
meetings  during  the  week,  part  of  the  time  every  night. 
Then  the  young  people  had  their  own  meetings  in  private 
houses,  to  influence  their  friends  and  schoolmates.  I  remem- 
ber how  I  envied  some  of  them.  There  were  two  or  three 
whose  faces  were  bright,  and  who  seemed  moved  with  the 
joy  of  their  new  faith,  who  told  us  they  were  never  so  happy 
in  their  lives,  and  urged  us  unceasingly  to  pass  through  the 
same  great  change.  But  how?  I  supposed  that,  first,  I 
must  experience  some  remarkable  conviction  of  sin,  that  I 
must  feel  that  I  had  been  very  wicked ;  and  that  in  some 
marvellous  moment  would  come  a  sense  of  forgiveness,  and 
light  and  joy.  I  was  told  that  there  were  two  kinds  of  sin, 
—  original,  that  inherited  from  Adam,  and  that  which  was 
the  result  of  our  own  personal  action.  But  I  could  not,  try 
as  I  would,  feel  myself  guilty  in  either  way.  I  could  feel 
sorry  for  Adam  ;  but  I  could  not  feel  sorry  for  his  sin  in  the 
sense  of  its  having  anything  to  do  with  me,  try  as  I  might. 
And  I  am  afraid,  along  with  my  sorrow,  there  was  a  sense 
of  admiration.  It  seemed  to  me  a  grand  thing  in  Adam  that 
he  did  not  let  Eve  bear  the  punishment  alone,  but  that  he 
decided  to  take  his  chances  along  with  her.  Nor  could  I 
feel  very  guilty  about  my  own  sins ;  for  I  could  not  see  what 
they  could  be.  I  had  tried  all  my  life  not  to  be  a  sinner. 
I  think  there  may  have  been  a  little  spiritual  pride  about  it. 
I  looked  about  among  my  schoolmates,  and  thought,  if  I  were 
like  certain  of  them,  I  could  feel  guilty ;  for  they  seemed  to 
be  anything  but  model  boys.  But  I  had  tried  to  live  a 
right  life ;  and  I  found  it  difficult  to  experience  this  sense 
of  guilt. 


Outgrowing  the  Old  Beliefs  17 

But  one  night  I  came  home  from  prayer-meeting  late. 
Every  one  but  myself  had  gone  to  sleep ;  and  I  was  alone  in 
the  old  country  farm-house.  There  was  a  bright  winter 
moon,  and  no  need  of  light  except  that  which  streamed  in  at 
the  windows.  There  was  no  fire  except  in  the  farm-house 
kitchen.  Here  I  sat  down,  and  made  up  my  mind  that  I 
would  not  leave  that  room  until  I  had,  as  I  said,  given  my- 
self to  God.  So  I  knelt  in  prayer,  and  told  God  that  I  would 
not  cease  praying  till  he  came  to  my  relief.  A  change  of 
feeling  did  come  over  me ;  and  I  believed  myself  pardoned, 
and  a  great  joy  was  in  my  heart.  And  I  went  to  bed  that 
night,  for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  feeling  the  assurance  that,  if 
I  did  not  wake  up  in  the  morning,  I  had  some  chance  of  find- 
ing myself  in  the  bright,  eternal  city  of  the  blessed. 

This  joy  lasted  for  a  few  days ;  and  then  a  great  change 
came  over  me, —  perhaps  only  a  nervous  reaction,  as  a  result 
of  the  strain  I  had  been  going  through.  But  I  found  myself 
depressed  and  in  great  doubt.  I  was  in  doubt  whether, 
after  all,  this  experience  had  been  genuine.  I  had  heard  it 
preached  over  and  over  again  that  a  large  number  of  those 
persons  who  thought  that  they  were  converted  were  mis- 
taken, that  there  were  few  only  who  would  be  saved.  And 
so  I  began  to  torment  myself  with  the  thought  that  probably 
I  was  not  one  of  the  chosen,  and  that  my  experience  had 
been  spurious.  I  look  back  at  myself  with  pity,  as  I  review 
the  weeks  that  followed.  Night  after  night, —  I  was  only 
thirteen  years  old, —  I  lay  down  upon  a  pillow  wet  with  my 
tears,  rising  frequently  to  pray,  finding  no  relief,  and  at  last 
sinking  to  sleep  in  sheer  despair,  trying  to  reawaken  the 
confidence  of  my  having  been  accepted  with  God.  It  did 
not  come.  Friends,  father,  mother,  brother,  and  ministers  all 
tried  to  help  me,  but  in  vain.  At  last,  I  gave  it  up,  thinking 
I  had  done  all  I  could,  and  that  perhaps  the  experience  was 


1 8  My  Creed 

genuine.  Along  with  many  others,  I  then  became  a  member 
of  the  Congregational  church.  I  stood  by  and  heard  the 
creed  read,  almost  no  part  of  which  did  I  understand.  No 
one  had  made  the  attempt  to  make  me  understand  it.  No 
one  had  gone  over  it  with  me.  I  was  expected  to  accept  it 
in  this  public  manner ;  and  I  did  so. 

As  I  grew  older,  the  question  of  my  after  course  in  life 
came  up.  I  can  remember,  when  the  stage  came  in, —  for  the 
cars  did  not  run  to  our  village  then, —  being  fascinated  with 
this  glimpse  of  life  from  another  world  ;  and  I  thought  that 
nothing  could  be  finer  than  to  be  a  stage-driver.  I  was  also 
interested  in  the  work  of  the  blacksmith  and  the  shoemaker, 
and  thought  that  here  were  careers  good  for  any  man.  But, 
as  I  grew  older,  I  do  not  remember  when  I  did  not  expect  to 
be  a  minister.  When  I  went  to  the  missionary  concert,  and 
saw  the  maps  of  the  heathen  lands  and  heard  the  appeals 
made  in  their  behalf,  I  felt  that  probably  I  should  become 
a  missionary  to  the  heathen. 

During  this  time,  I  had  my  first  experience  of  scepticism. 
There  was  a  young  man,  a  student  from  Bowdoin  College, 
who  used  to  come  to  our  village,  and  who  was  pointed  out  to 
me  as  a  man  who  did  not  believe  in  the  reality  of  the  story 
of  Adam  and  Eve  in  the  garden ;  and  I  remember  I  looked 
at  him  with  a  sort  of  horror,  and  wondered  how  any  one  so 
wicked  was  permitted  to  live.  Perhaps  I  thought  of  that 
story  of  Paul  on  the  Island  of  Melita,  where  the  viper  came 
out  and  fastened  on  his  hand,  and  those  that  looked  on  ex- 
pected the  judgment  of  God  to  visit  him  for  his  sins.  It 
never  occurred  to  me  that  this  young  man  might  be  wiser 
than  any  of  us,  and  thus  have  a  basis  for  his  doubt. 

When  I  went  to  the  theological  seminary,  I  was  still  firmly 
grounded  in  my  belief  ;  and,  while  there,  it  never  occurred  to 
me,  from  anything  that  teachers  said  to  us,  that  we  were 


Outgrowing  the  Old  Beliefs  19 

freely  to  discuss  the  great  problems  of  religion.  We  were 
taught  to  accept  them  without  question.  We  were  treated 
as  though  we  were  religious  cadets  at  a  theological  West 
Point, —  not  seekers  after  truth,  but  persons  to  be  trained  in 
the  belief  that  such  and  such  things  were  so,  and  that 
we  were  to  be  ready  to  go  out  and  fight  for  them  against  the 
world. 

That  was  the  type  of  religious  training  through  which 
I  passed  in  fitting  for  the  ministry.  I  have  been  asked 
many  times  why,  if  these  modern  ideas  are  true,  the  min- 
isters trained  in  the  old  faith  are  not  more  ready  to  accept 
them.  When  I  look  back  to  the  kind  of  training  through 
which  I  went,  the  answer  is  plain  enough  :  they  are  taught 
not  to  be  fearless  truth-seekers,  but  to  accept  certain  things 
as  true,  and  to  defend  them  against  the  world, —  an  attitude 
the  most  utterly  incompatible  with  the  free  consideration  of 
great  themes  and  the  acceptance  of  light  from  any  quarter 
from  which  it  may  come. 

When  I  left  the  seminary,  instead  of  settling  in  some  quiet 
country  town,  I  was  desirous  of  seeing  something  of  pioneer 
life,  of  doing  some  missionary  work,  of  standing  on  my  own 
feet,  of  going  to  some  place  where  a  minister  was  merely  a 
man,  and  where  he  must  make  his  own  way  on  the  basis  of 
what  he' could  say  and  do.  So  I  took  a  commission  from  the 
Home  Missionary  Society,  and  went  to  California,  and  began 
my  work  by  preaching  in  a  school-house.  Through  the 
three  years  that  I  was  there,  I  was  still  earnest  in  the  old 
belief,  and  for  some  time  engaged  with  the  evangelist,  Mr. 
Earle,  in  revival  work.  No  question  of  the  reality  of  these 
beliefs  ever  entered  my  mind  in  any  serious  fashion.  I 
almost  regretted  leaving  New  England ;  for  I  regarded  the 
Unitarian  heresy  as  so  serious  a  matter  that  I  wanted  to  be 
on  the  field,  that  I  might  fight  it. 


2O  My  Creed 

Family  matters  brought  me  back  again.  On  my  return,  I 
preached  in  the  Shawmut  and  Park  Street  churches,  where, 
I  presume,  I  should  hardly  be  welcome  at  the  present  time. 
I  needed  at  that  time  to  make  a  home,  not  only  for  myself, 
but  for  my  father  and  mother,  who  were  old ;  and  I  settled 
in  Framingham.  There  I  first  came  in  contact  with  Unita- 
rianism.  But  what  I  saw  and  knew  of  it,  through  the  con- 
versations I  had  with  a  friend  who  had  been  a  Unitarian 
clergyman,  only  set  me  more  and  more  against  it.  This  put 
me  in  a  position  of  antagonism,  making  me  feel  that  here 
was  a  battle  to  be  fought. 

To  one  incident  there,  however,  I  trace  a  beginning  of 
the  larger  results  that  followed.  For  the  first  time,  while 
living  in  Framingham,  I  read  a  tract  against  future  punish- 
ment. It  was  written  by  Dr.  Bellows ;  and,  oh,  how  my  heart 
longed  to  believe  it!  How  I  longed  to  accept  this  great 
hope  for  all  mankind !  But  I  was  afraid.  I  did  not  dare 
trust  myself  to  this  feeling,  lest  I  should  be  led  astray,  and 
endanger  not  only  my  own  soul,  but  the  souls  of  others. 
Becoming  restless  in  the  quiet,  old  settled  town  of  Framing- 
ham,  after  the  stirring  missionary  work  of  California,  I 
determined  to  go  West,  and,  out  of  two  calls,  accepted  one 
to  Hannibal,  Mo.  During  the  three  and  a  half  years 
there  was  fought  out  the  great  battle  that  constituted  the 
turning-point  of  my  life.  Here  I  began  to  doubt  some  of 
the  main  points  of  the  old  theology.  As  I  looked  over  my 
church  and  at  those  outside  of  it,  I  began  to  question  as 
to  what  were  the  fundamental  distinctions  between  those 
out  and  those  in.  So  far  as  I  could  see,  my  religious 
theories  did  not  work  practically,  as  I  applied  them  to  men 
and  women.  The  men  outside  ought  to  have  been  worse, 
and  the  men  inside  ought  to  have  been  better.  I  could  not 
tell  wherein  consisted  the  distinction.  I  knew  many  a  man 


Outgrowing  the  Old  Beliefs  21 

and  woman  outside  who  were  unspeakably  better  than  some 
of  the  church  members.  Then  I  was  haunted  by  the  memo- 
ries of  this  desire  to  have  some  larger  and  better  hope  for 
men.  My  heart  began  to  revolt  against  what  seemed  the 
cruelty,  the  injustice,  and  partiality  of  the  divine  government. 
I  began  to  question  whether  it  could  be  justice  and  goodness 
and  love  in  a  God  who  gave  light  to  only  a  few  of  his  chil- 
dren, and  left  the  great  masses  of  the  world  to  wander  in 
darkness  and  to  perish. 

Then  I  began  to  doubt  and  question  whether  the  Bible, 
which  was  the  fundamental  basis  of  the  old  belief,  was  as 
infallible  as  it  had  been  claimed  to  be.  So  I  began  anew 
the  study  of  the  Scriptures,  trying  to  find  out  their  origin, 
their  nature,  their  authority,  what  claim  they  had  on  the 
human  heart  and  conscience.  During  this  time,  I  read 
many  books  written  by  liberal  divines.  Among  these,  the 
one  which  influenced  me  most,  and  that  I  remember  with 
peculiar  distinctness,  was  James  Freeman  Clarke's  Ortho- 
doxy :  Its  Truths  and  Errors.  I  began  also  a  study  of 
science;  and  one  of  the  principal  charges  brought  against 
me,  when  I  began  to  be  suspected  of  being  a  heretic,  was 
that  I  had  too  many  scientific  books  in  my  library.  This 
was  supposed  in  itself  to  constitute  an  accusation  against  the 
soundness  of  my  faith. 

Change  then  began,  and  grew  apace;  and,  as  the  result 
of  this  scientific  study,  I  became  a  firm  believer  in  the  gen- 
eral theory  of  evolution.  While  still  in  the  orthodox  church, 
I  read  a  paper  on  Darwinianism,  accepting  and  defending  it 
from  first  to  last.  But  I  had  not  outgrown  the  folly  of 
trying  to  reconcile  it  with  Genesis, —  as  though  any  truth 
were  not  true,  whether  or  not  it  agreed  with  something  said 
thousands  of  years  ago !  I  soon  became  known  as  a  man 
somewhat  dangerous  and  unsound  in  the  faith. 


22  My  Creed 

I  congratulate  you  who  can  sit  quietly  in  your  pews 
through  these  transition  times.  You  have  little  idea  of 
what  it  means  to  one  who  occupies  a  pulpit,  one  who  cannot 
sit  still  and  brood  until  the  changing,  ripening  process  is 
complete,  one  who,  out  of  the  confusion  of  brain,  out  of  the 
aching  heart,  out  of  the  questioning  as  to  what  is  true,  what 
must  be  said  or  left  unsaid,  is  still  compelled,  every  week  of 
his  life,  to  face  a  waiting  audience  and  discuss  these  great 
themes  of  life  and  death.  The  pain  sometimes  came  to  be 
almost  unbearable.  There  were  long  and  weary  months 
when  I  believe  I  would  have  been  glad  to  lie  down  and 
fall  into  an  unwaking  sleep,  only  to  escape  this  terrible 
struggle.  One  thing,  however,  I  can  say.  During  that  long 
time,  I  did  not  preach  anything  which  I  did  not  believe, 
though  it  was  perpetually  charged  against  me  that  I  did  not 
preach  a  great  many  things  which  I  ought  to  believe,  which 
I  ought  to  have  preached.  It  was  the  omissions  that  were 
the  principal  charges  brought  against  me  during  those 
months  and  years. 

As  I  review  this  experience,  I  am  obliged  to  think  very 
tenderly  of  other  ministers  who  are  going  through  these 
transitions.  It  is  very  easy  to  say  such  a  man  of  liberal 
tendencies  ought  to  see  his  way  clearly,  that  he  ought  not 
to  stay  where  he  is.  It  is  easy  to  make  such  charges 
against  men.  But  it  is  very  difficult,  when  one  is  in  the 
midst  of  this  confusion,  feeling  his  way,  oppressed  with  the 
responsibility  that  is  laid  on  him,  not  only  for  his  own  soul, 
but  for  the  souls  of  others,  to  see  the  path  which  he  ought 
to  take.  I  became  perfectly  conscious  of  the  fact  that  I  was 
no  longer  orthodox,  in  the  proper  sense  of  that  word ;  but 
I  did  not  know,  with  any  clearness,  whether  there  was  a 
church  on  earth  to  which  I  could  honestly  belong  or  any 
pulpit  in  which  I  could  honestly  speak  my  word.  So  let  me 


Outgrowing  the  Old  Beliefs  23 

bespeak  your  charity,  then,  for  those  ministers  that  are  pass- 
ing through  these  transitions.  Remember  that  it  is  easier 
to  see  and  know  after  it  has  become  perfectly  clear  than  it 
is  to  comprehend  when  you  are  in  the  midst  of  the  confu- 
sion of  changing  thought  or  when  you  are  clouded  over  by 
fear  as  to  the  possible  consequences  of  your  action. 

At  this  time,  two  or  three  things  occurred  which  threw  a 
strong  light  upon  the  theological  condition  of  the  Church  at 
that  time.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  I  had  become  a  pro- 
nounced, out-and-out  heretic,  and  that  two  or  three  persons 
had  become  strongly  opposed  to  me,  when  it  came  to  my  leav- 
ing, even  my  enemies  begged  me  to  remain.  At  that  time,  I 
was  called  to  two  other  orthodox  churches,  both  of  which  ear- 
nestly tendered  the  call,  although  they  knew  of  my  heresies. 
There  were  two  orthodox  doctors  of  divinity  in  Chicago,  who, 
after  a  long  and  free  conversation  with  me,  said,  "  You  ought 
to  have  stayed  in,  and  helped  us  fight  it  out  on  the  inside." 
But  I  came  to  believe  that  this  was  not  an  honest  course  to 
follow. 

One  other  incident  I  will  mention  to  show  the  condition  of 
thought  in  the  orthodox  body.  I  published  my  first  book 
while  I  was  in  Missouri,  in  the  orthodox  church.  The  papers, 
East  and  West,  indorsed  its  position,  and  gave  it  more  gen- 
erous praise  than  I  dared  to  hope  for.  I  republished  it  the 
first  year  of  my  residence  in  this  city,  from  the  same  plates, 
without  the  change  of  a  sentence,  word,  or  even  punctuation 
point;  and,  suddenly,  these  same  papers  discovered  that  it 
was  a  very  dangerous  book.  This  showed  that  it  was  a  very 
different  thing  to  speak  from  the  platform  of  a  Congrega- 
tional and  that  of  a  Unitarian  church. 

I  came  at  last  to  feel  that  honesty  demanded  that  I  should 
carry  in  the  sight  of  the  world  the  colors  under  which  I 
proposed  to  fight.  I  have  no  "railing  accusation"  to  bring 


24  My  Creed 

against  those  men  who,  holding  liberal  ideas,  propose  to  stay 
in,  and  fight  it  out  on  the  inside.  They  may  see  a  way  to  do 
it  honestly.  I  cannot.  It  seemed  to  me  very  much  like  a 
member  of  the  Democratic  party  secretly  working  in  favor 
of  the  Republicans,  or  like  a  soldier  wearing  the  uniform  of 
one  army  and  secretly  opposing  those  with  whom  he  pro- 
fessed to  be  in  sympathy. 

It  seemed  to  me,  therefore,  that  I  must  come  out  and  stand 
where  I  was  understood.  Though  those  who  listened  to  me 
from  Sunday  to  Sunday  found  no  fault  with  my  sayings,  I 
knew  that  they  only  partly  understood  the  implications  of 
the  position  which  I  was  taking  and  defending.  I  felt  per- 
fectly sure  that,  if  they  did  know,  they  would  not  be  thus  cor- 
dial. I  determined,  then,  to  come  out,  and  occupy  a  position 
where  I  could  be  perfectly  open  and  free.  I  was  invited  to 
the  Third  Unitarian  Church  in  Chicago.  Up  to  this  time, 
I  had  never  stood  in  a  Unitarian  pulpit.  The  first  Sunday  I 
did  so  stand,  I  stood  in  my  own,  preaching  my  first  free  ser- 
mon in  my  own  free  pulpit.  When  they  asked  me  to  become 
their  minister,  I  told  them  frankly  that  I  did  not  know 
whether  I  was  a  Unitarian  or  not,  and  I  did  not  care  much, 
but  I  knew  I  could  not  stay  longer  where  I  had  been.  If 
they  were  willing  to  give  me  an  opportunity  to  study  and 
think  freely  and  to  preach  what  I  earnestly  believed,  whether 
it  might  be  labelled  by  one  title  or  by  another,  then  I  would 
accept.  On  those  terms,  they  did  accept  me ;  and  I  began 
my  work  as  a  Unitarian. 

Now,  dropping  this  personal  part,  I  wish  to  sum  up  some 
of  the  principal  steps  which  I  took,  which  all  men  take,  in 
leaving  the  old  beliefs  and  coming  into  the  new. 

One  of  the  first  steps  is  the  revolt  of  the  heart  against  this 
old  conception  of  God,  against  this  old  method  of  governing 
the  universe, —  the  feeling  that  it  is  unjust,  that  it  is  partial, 


Outgrowing  the  Old  Beliefs  25 

that  it  is  cruel,  that  it  is  not  like  a  Father,  and  that,  if  God 
be  our  Father,  then  this  cannot  be  true. 

Next  comes  a  new  study  of  the  Scriptures,  to  see  whether 
they  be  divinely  inspired  in  a  sense  to  make  them  infallible. 
And  the  careful,  free  study  of  the  Bible  discovers  it  to  be 
a  human  production  from  first  to  last,  the  natural  outgrowth 
of  the  religious  nature  of  man, — beginning  in  barbarism,  as 
humanity  began ;  ending  in  those  grand  glimpses  of  the  eter- 
nal future  which  are  so  beautifully  outlined  and  illustrated 
in  some  of  the  higher  and  finer  words  of  Jesus. 

Then  there  comes  this  scientific  study  of  the  world,  this 
new  theory  of  the  universe,  of  God,  of  man,  of  destiny. 
What  do  we  find  here  ?  We  find  not  this  tiny  world  of  the 
Mosaic  cosmology,  with  God  sitting  outside,  ruling  it  as  a 
despot  rules  his  kingdom :  we  find  an  infinite  universe,  and 
that  God,  if  he  be  anywhere,  is  the  life  and  soul  and  heart 
of  the  universe  itself.  And  we  find  that  man,  instead  of 
having  been  created  perfect  six  thousand  years  ago,  and  hav- 
ing fallen  from  that  perfect  state,  and  so  needing  to  be  re- 
deemed in  the  theological  sense  of  that  term,  began  close 
on  the  border  of  the  animal  world, —  that  there  has  been  no 
fall. 

Note  the  result  of  this.  The  whole  theological  scheme  of 
Christendom  rests  on  the  foundation  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
fall  of  man.  There  follows  from  that  an  infallible  revela- 
tion given  by  miracle,  confirmed  by  miracle, —  the  necessity 
of  an  infallible  church  to  hold  this  revelation  as  in  a  sacred 
depository,  and  to  interpret  it  for  the  benefit  of  man. 
Third,  the  necessity  of  an  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God  to 
work  atonement  through  his  suffering  and  death  for  those 
that  believe  and  so  are  sharers  in  the  benefits  of  that  atone- 
ment. There  follows  of  necessity  on  this  old  basis  of  belief 
an  eternal  heaven  for  those  that  accept  the  salvation  and 


26  My  Creed 

of  necessity  a  belief  in  an  eternal  hell  for  those  who  do  not. 
This  scheme  is  perfectly  logical  and  consistent  from  begin- 
ning to  end.  It  springs  out  of  and  rests  on  the  doctrine  of 
the  fall.  If  there  be  no  fall,  then  there  is  no  need  of  any 
miraculous  revelation ;  no  need  of  any  infallible  church,  no 
need  of  God's  coming  down  to  the  world  to  be  a  man,  living 
and  suffering  and  dying;  and  the  doctrine  of  the  future 
destiny  of  the  race  is  entirely  transformed. 

As  the  result  of  the  study  of  modern  science,  this  belief 
in  the  fall  of  man  dissolves  as  a  dream  dissolves  when  a 
man  awakes. 

After  going  through  this  process  of  thought,  one  finds 
himself  in  a  new  world.  The  old  theological  scheme 
belonged  to  the  old  universe.  In  this  new  universe  which 
evolution  has  revealed  to  us,  there  is  no  place  for  one  single 
essential  doctrine  of  the  old  theology.  It  fades  away  as  the 
mists  fade  from  the  sides  of  the  mountains  when  the  sun  is 
up,  when  the  world  stands  out  clear.  I  feel  sometimes  as 
if  I  had  waked  up  from  a  dream.  You  know  that  grotesque 
and  irrational  things  seem  perfectly  natural  and  logical  in 
dreams,  because  you  are  in  the  dream-world.  But,  when 
the  morning  comes  and  the  light  shines  into  the  easterly 
windows,  you  rub  your  eyes,  and  say,  It  is  impossible  that 
I  should  now  look  upon  things  as  I  did  when  I  was  in  the 
dream.  I  feel  sometimes  as  though,  in  emerging  from  this 
old  belief,  I  had  come  from  an  underground  cavern  where 
everything  was  dim  twilight,  and  only  shadows  could  be 
seen,  but  that  now  I  am  up  under  the  blue  sky,  in  the  breezy 
world  where  the  sun  is  shining,  where  I  hear  the  birds  sing 
in  the  trees,  and  listen  to  the  far-off  music  of  the  waters. 
This  seems  a  real  world. 

My  friends  say  to  me  now  and  then,  those  who  were  my 
friends  in  the  old  time,  and  are  personal  friends  still,  "  You 


Outgrowing  the  Old  Beliefs  27 

have  given  up  the  old  beliefs,  but  you  have  nothing  to  take 
their  place."  I  have  given  them  up,  thank  God, —  all  those 
old  beliefs.  But  what  did  I  give  up?  I  gave  up  belief 
in  a  cruel,  partial,  imperfect  God.  I  gave  up  belief  in  a 
disastrously  ruined  and  fallen  world.  I  gave  up  belief  in 
the  total  depravity  of  man.  I  gave  up  belief  in  miracles.  I 
gave  up  belief  in  a  miraculous,  divine  incarnation,  and  in  the 
suffering  and  death  of  God.  I  gave  up  belief  in  endless 
hell. 

And  what  have  I  in  place  of  these  ?  I  have  an  infinite, 
perfect,  loving  God.  I  have  a  world  that  has  not  been  the 
scene  of  any  disaster  or  ruin,  but  has  been  simply  one  line 
of  orderly  law  and  progress  from  the  first.  I  have  a  human- 
ity having  begun,  indeed,  very  low  down,  but  having  climbed 
up  to  the  point  where  we  can  say,  "  Now  are  we  the  sons  of 
God."  I  have  a  belief  not  in  a  special,  miraculous,  impos- 
sible incarnation  of  God  in  one  man  eighteen  hundred  years 
ago,  but  in  the  divineness  of  all  men,  in  the  immanence  of 
God  in  every  heart,  in  every  brain,  in  all  the  race  from  the 
beginning  until  the  end.  I  have  a  belief  in  an  eternal  hope, 
—  not  that  all  men  will  be  perfect  when  they  die,  but  that 
there  is  the  same  God,  the  same  love,  the  same  light,  the 
same  possibility,  in  all  worlds  and  all  ages.  Given  up  ?  Yes ! 
Given  up  darkness,  given  up  doubt,  given  up  fear,  given  up 
horror  and  despair,  and  found — life  and  light  and  joy  and 
peace  and  hope  for  evermore  1 


WHAT  LIGHT  HAVE  WE  TO  GUIDE  US? 


I  HAVE  already  taken  you  over  one  of  the  several  paths 
that  lead  from  the  old  universe  into  the  new  one ;  and  I  have 
told  you  that  in  succeeding  sermons  it  was  my  purpose  to 
raise  and  answer  the  question,  What  trustworthy  beliefs  are 
still  left  to  us  ?  We  have  given  up  many  of  the  main  points 
of  what  is  called  the  old  faith.  Have  we  lost  or  have  we 
gained  ?  Is  going  from  the  old  world  into  the  new  progress 
or  retrogression?  But  preliminary  to  this,  and  necessary 
by  way  of  preparation  for  the  answer  to  these  questions,  is 
the  one  that  I  propose  as  our  morning  theme, —  What  light 
have  we  in  this  new  world  by  which  to  guide  our  steps  ?  We 
have  given  up  many  of  those  things  which  were  regarded  as 
lights,  lamps,  candles,  by  which  human  pilgrims  have  been 
directing  their  steps  in  the  ages  of  the  past :  what  have  we 
left  by  which  to  guide  our  feet  to-day  ? 

All  the  old  religions  of  the  world  have  claimed  that  they 
had  some  supernatural,  some  infallible  guidance ;  that  they 
were  not  in  doubt  in  regard  to  any  of  the  main  questions  of 
religious  belief  and  practice.  Priest  or  church,  oracle  or 
book,  whatever  it  has  been,  they  have  advanced  and  held 
to  the  claim  that  they  had  some  secret  way  of  access  to  the 
council  of  the  gods,  so  that  there  have  been  persons  or 
hierarchies,  organizations,  institutions,  bibles,  set  up  above 
the  ordinary  level  of  humanity,  and  regarded  as  beacons 
by  which  the  ships  of  humanity  were  to  sail  on  their 


What  Light  have  we  to  guide  us  29 

quests  after  truth,  after  happiness,  after  life.  If  you  go 
among  barbarous  tribes,  you  will  find  that  this  belief  has 
been  held  by  them  no  less  strongly  than  by  those  more 
civilized.  Perhaps  it  is  even  true  that  the  lower  you  go  in 
the  scale  of  civilization,  the  more  confidence  of  certainty  do 
you  discover.  Among  our  North  American  aborigines,  there 
has  always  been  the  medicine  man,  some  one  who  has 
gained  an  ascendency  over  the  people,  some  one  who  has 
claimed  to  be  in  the  secrets  of  the  invisible  powers  that  held 
the  destiny  of  the  tribe  in  their  hands,  some  one  who  could 
find  out  what  they  wished  to  have  done,  and  communicate 
it  to  the  people.  And  so  in  every  tribe  on  all  the  face  of 
the  earth  you  find  some  religious  authority,  some  one  claim- 
ing infallible  insight  or  information  as  to  what  the  people 
ought  to  believe  and  do,  how  and  when  they  ought  to  accom- 
plish certain  things  demanded  at  their  hands. 

Among  the  ancient  Greeks  there  were  oracles,  the  oracle 
at  Delphi  and  the  oracle  at  Dodona.  In  the  one  case,  the 
mysterious  vapor  rising  from  a  subterranean  cave  was  sup- 
posed to  be  the  source  of  the  divine  inspiration,  so  that  the 
priestess  who  was  under  its  influence  would  utter  the  wisdom 
of  the  god  who  presided  over  the  temple.  At  Dodona,  those 
gifted  with  power  to  interpret  were  supposed  to  listen  to  the 
rustling  of  the  leaves  on  the  sacred  oak,  and  so  to  gain  a 
knowledge  of  the  will  of  the  deity  to  whom  this  oak  was 
sacred.  In  Rome  there  were  soothsayers  and  diviners,  who 
watched  the  flight  of  certain  sacred  birds,  the  movements  of 
certain  sacred  animals,  who  examined  the  entrails,  the  vital 
parts,  of  sacrifices,  and  in  this  way  claimed  to  interpret  the 
will  of  the  gods.  Among  the  Hebrews,  the  priests  claimed 
that,  in  the  use  of  the  sacred  instruments,  the  Urim  and  the 
Thummim,  they  could  find  out  the  will  of  Jehovah.  And 
among  the  early  Christians  the  belief  was  no  less  strong ,- 


30  My  Creed 

for,  when  it  came  to  the  case  of  electing  some  one  to  make 
complete  the  number  of  the  twelve  apostles  after  the  fall 
of  Judas,  they  chose  two,  and  then,  after  having  prayed, 
they  cast  lots,  in  the  sure  confidence  that  God  would  direct 
this  casting  of  the  lot.  And,  when  it  fell  upon  Matthias, 
they  supposed  that  they  had  an  infallible  intimation  as  to 
the  will  of  God  in  the  matter.  Even  to-day,  when  it  comes 
to  the  choosing  of  a  new  pope,  the  college  of  cardinals,  after 
fasting  and  praying  and  going  through  religious  ceremonials 
of  one  kind  and  another,  claim  to  have  perfect  confidence 
that,  when  they  come  to  the  voting,  there  will  be  such  a 
divine  influence  moving  in  the  hearts  and  working  on  the 
minds  of  the  members  of  the  college  that  their  choice  shall 
only  be  registering  that  which  has  already  been  made  in 
heaven.  To  be  sure,  this  confidence  does  not  preclude  the 
possibility  or  the  fact  of  a  great  deal  of  lobbying,  of  log- 
rolling, of  what  seem  like  political  methods,  in  the  attempt 
to  obtain  the  position  or  secure  the  election  of  a  favorite 
candidate.  But  it  is  easy  enough  to  get  over  all  this,  and 
to  say  that  God  rules  even  among  the  passions  of  men,  and 
so  he  thus  registers  his  unchangeable  will.  So  it  is  true,  as 
I  have  said,  that  in  all  the  religions  of  the  world  men  have 
claimed  some  infallible  guidance,  a  light  whose  beams  never 
led  astray. 

There  are,  however,  only  two  forms  of  this  faith  with 
which  we  need  specially  concern  ourselves  this  morning. 
There  are  two  claims  as  wide  as  Christendom  which  we 
have  rejected,  but  which  are  so  important,  and  which  so 
divide  between  them  the  allegiance  of  the  great  Christian 
world,  that  we  cannot  pass  them  over  without  at  least  some 
brief  review. 

In  the  Catholic  world,  it  is  claimed  that  God's  Spirit  so 
resides  and  works  in  and  through  the  Church  that,  where  it 


What  Light  have  we  to  guide  us  31 

delivers  its  opinion  as  to  a  matter  of  faith,  either  through  an 
oecumenical  council  or  through  the  lips  of  the  pope,  it  is  the 
infallible  truth  of  God.  The  Protestant  world,  of  course, 
rejects  this  claim,  and,  instead  of  it,  points  to  its  Book.  It 
says  the  Church,  the  council,  the  pope,  are  fallible,  and  make 
mistakes;  but  the  Book  at  least  is  a  transcript  of  divine, 
unchangeable,  eternal  truth. 

Now  let  us  consider  this  subject  for  a  little,  and  see  where 
we  stand  in  regard  to  these  two  great  claims. 

In  the  first  place,  I  am  willing  to  confess  for  one  that  I 
would  like  very  much  indeed,  as  I  think  of  it  in  some  ways, 
to  have  some  infallible  guidance.  Mr.  Huxley  not  long  ago, 
in  discussing  the  question  whether  men  were  free  or  whether 
they  were  under  some  compulsion,  whether  their  actions  and 
even  their  thoughts  were  automatic,  went  so  far  as  to  say 
that  he  would  be  willing,  for  his  part,  to  be  an  automaton,  if 
he  could  only  be  absolutely  certain  that  the  mechanism 
would  always  work  right  and  produce  perfect  results.  So  it 
seems  very  desirable  to  have  some  sort  of  infallible  guidance 
in  regard  to  these  great  matters  of  the  religious  life.  And 
yet,  as  I  think  of  it  a  little  more  carefully,  I  am  not  quite  so 
certain  as  to  its  desirability ;  for,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  those 
who  have  claimed  this  infallible  guidance  in  the  past  have 
never  been  able  to  understand  their  guide  in  precisely  the 
same  way,  so  that  the  practical  result  of  it  has  not  been  any 
certainty  of  being  guided  right.  There  have  been  all  sorts 
of  parties,  discussions,  disputes,  in  regard  to  the  guidance  of 
the  Church.  And,  when  we  come  to  the  matter  of  the  Bible, 
do  we  not  know,  as  we  look  over  Christendom,  that  it  is  all 
split  up  into  little,  bitter,  warring,  antagonistic  sects  and 
parties,  divided  simply  on  the  question  as  to  what  the  in- 
fallible guide  really  says  ?  All  that  claim  to  have  infallible 
guidance,  therefore,  are  not  walking  in  the  same  path ;  they 


32  My  Creed 

do  not  understand  the  voice  of  this  infallible  guide  in  the 
same  way ;  so  that,  practically,  it  does  not  work  very  well. 

If  you  stop  to  think  of  it  for  a  moment,  you  will  see  that 
there  is  either  some  defect  in  the  human  mind  or  else  some 
defect  in  language.  It  is  simply  impossible  to  have  any 
form  of  words  framed  that  shall  bear  precisely  the  same 
meaning  to  every  human  mind.  The  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  of  America  is  a  very  plain  document  appar- 
ently: it  is  not  full  of  figures,  or  poetry,  or  imagery,  or 
phrases  that  may  be  interpreted  this  way  or  that.  The 
framers  intended,  at  any  rate,  to  make  it  as  plain  as  a  guide- 
board  at  a  country  cross-roads.  Yet  scholars,  statesmen, 
diplomats,  politicians,  ever  since  it  was  framed,  have  been 
quarrelling  over  the  meaning  of  some  of  its  apparently  plain- 
est phrases. 

Again,  those  who  have  claimed  to  have  this  infallible 
guidance  have  developed  spiritual  conceit,  spiritual  pride : 
they  have  been  taught  to  look  upon  themselves  as  peculiar 
selected  people,  chosen  out  of  the  great  mass  of  the  world 
by  the  peculiar  favor  of  God,  and  set  apart  for  the  reception 
of  his  special  grace.  It  has  cultivated  and  developed  cer- 
tain qualities  and  characteristics  of  mind  and  heart  that  are 
not  desirable,  and  that  do  not  lift  men  in  reality,  in  spiritual 
grade  of  being,  above  their  fellows.  It  has  developed  hard- 
ness of  heart,  cruelty,  persecution,  and  has  led  to  all  sorts 
of  divisions,  wars,  bloodshed,  and  some  of  the  most  disas- 
trous results,  some  of  the  greatest  horrors,  that  are  recorded 
in  history. 

Then,  again,  if  one  claims  to  have  an  infallible  guide  and 
it  be  not  really  infallible,  you  see  the  evil  that  must  result. 
Only  the  other  day,  the  captain  of  one  of  our  great  Cunard 
steamships  came  on  our  coast  in  a  fog,  not  having  been  able 
to  see  the  sun  or  to  make  his  observations  for  several  days. 


What  Light  have  we  to  guide  us  33 

The  great  trouble  of  it  all,  and  that  which  led  to  the  disaster, 
was  his  confidence  that,  in  spite  of  the  difficulties  through 
which  he  had  passed,  he  thought  he  knew  more  about  the 
coast  and  the  situation  of  things  than  he  actually  did.  If 
he  had  doubted  a  little  more,  if  he  had  had  a  little  less 
confidence  and  so  a  little  more  caution,  he  might  not  have 
been  so  sure  that  the  south  shore  of  Boston  Harbor  was  the 
north,  and  so  have  kept  his  ship  off  the  coast.  It  would 
have  been  better  to  doubt  and  wait  until  he  knew.  So,  in 
any  direction,  when  men  think  they  know  more  than  they 
actually  do,  this  confidence  is  not  a  guide  into  safe  paths, 
but  will  certainly  lead  them  astray. 

Let  us  look  then  for  a  moment  at  the  great  guides  of  the 
world  in  the  past,  and  note  some  illustrations  of  the  results 
of  mankind's  following  them.  What  has  been  the  result  of 
the  claim  of  the  infallibility  of  the  Church  ?  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  recorded  in  history,  the  main  development  of  an 
infallible  church,  the  Church  of  Rome,  has  gone  wrong  on 
almost  every  namable  question  which  has  been  up  for  prac- 
tical settlement.  It  went  wrong  as  to  the  geography  of  the 
earth,  claiming  to  know  and  opposing  those  who  proposed 
to  investigate  and  dared  to  doubt,  persecuting  them,  hurl- 
ing against  them  the  lightning  of  divine  wrath,  threatening 
with  penalties  unending  in  the  future.  And  yet,  at  every 
single  point,  the  Church  was  wrong.  Then,  when  you  come 
to  matters  of  astronomy,  through  how  many  hundreds  of 
years  did  the  Church  fight  against  this  new  science,  and  the 
proposal  to  change  the  conception  of  the  world  as  to  the 
relative  position  of  this  little  earth  of  ours  in  the  infinite 
universe  of  which  it  is  such  a  tiny  part.  Here,  again,  the 
Church  was  all  wrong  in  spite  of  its  infallibility.  And  those 
who  in  the  midst  of  difficulty  were  feeling  their  way,  inves- 
tigating, trying  to  discover  some  solid  basis  for  their  feet, — 


34  My  Creed 

these  men  were  friends  of  God,  and  were  trying  to  read  some 
little  fragment  of  God's  real  word.  When  we  come  to  chem- 
istry and  physics,  the  same  is  true,  the  Church  all  wrong,  the 
students,  so  far  as  they  went,  right,  and  reaching  out  in  the 
right  direction;  the  Church  opposing,  fighting,  persecuting, 
hindering,  until  at  last  the  infallible  guide  suffers  ignomini- 
ous defeat.  Then,  in  political  economy,  the  Church  fighting 
for  ages  the  taking  of  interest  on  money,  for  example, 
regarding  it  as  a  sin ;  against  having  a  census  taken,  because 
David,  forsooth,  was  reported  to  have  been  punished  be- 
cause he  counted  the  number  of  his  people  and  armies.  In 
his  day,  this  was  looked  on  as  an  indication  of  distrust  in  God. 
So  in  anatomy,  in  medicine.  It  was  ages  before  the  world 
was  permitted  to  study  medicine  in  any  rational  way.  We 
wonder  sometimes  that  the  doctors  are  not  wiser  than  they 
are;  but  it  is  only  within  modern  times  that  they  have  had 
any  opportunity  for  free,  untrammelled  investigation.  For 
ages,  the  Church  did  its  best  to  hinder  them.  It  declared 
that  it  was  sacrilege  to  dissect  the  human  body ;  but  how 
else  could  one  find  out  how  it  was  made  ?  It  declared  that 
it  was  sacrilege  to  inoculate  for  the  prevention  of  small-pox, 
because  it  was  interfering  with  God's  judgment ;  that  it  was 
blasphemy  to  prevent  suffering,  by  the  use  of  an  anaesthetic, 
in  the  case  of  child-birth,  because  it  was  interfering  with 
God's  judgment  on  woman  on  account  of  the  fall.  The 
infallible  Church  has  always  opposed  every  step  of  human 
progress,  and,  so  far  as  it  has  been  followed,  has  led  men 
astray.  Whatever  progress  has  been  made  has  been  made 
in  open  revolt  against  this  infallible  leadership,  and  under 
the  dictation  and  guidance  of  this  poor  human  reason  of 
ours. 

When  we  come  to   the   Bible,   what    then?    The   Bible 
starts  in  its  very  first  chapter  with  false  science, —  the  best 


What  Light  have  we  to  guide  us  35 

science  that  any  one  knew  at  the  time,  but  wrong,  as  every 
unbiassed  scholar  knows  to-day.  It  starts  with  mistaken 
teaching  in  regard  to  the  origin  and  nature  of  man,  in  re- 
gard to  his  character,  in  regard  to  his  moral  condition.  The 
Bible  is  mistaken  all  the  way  through,  almost  from  first  to 
last,  whenever  it  dares  to  teach  a  matter  of  history.  The 
Bible  is  anything  but  infallible,  especially  in  the  older  parts 
of  it,  in  its  ethics.  It  represents  at  the  beginning  the 
ethical  conception  of  a  barbaric  people.  It  indicates  the  nat- 
ural steps  of  human  growth.  It  is  merely  the  natural  out- 
come and  reflection  of  purely  human  and  fallible  conditions 
of  thought  and  life.  What  then  ?  In  so  far  as  men  have 
followed  either  the  Church  or  the  Bible  as  being  infallible 
guides,  they  have  been  continually  liable  to  go  into  wrong 
paths,  and  fall  into  difficulties  of  every  kind.  Whether, 
then,  we  would  like  an  infallible  guide  or  not,  whether  it 
would  be  a  good  thing  or  not,  we  must  frankly  admit  that 
we  have  none. 

Again,  let  me  say,  and  for  another  reason,  grander  per- 
haps than  those  which  I  have  alluded  to,  that  it  may  be  more 
than  a  question  whether  the  possession  of  an  infallible  guide 
be  a  desirable  thing. 

What  is  the  most  important  part  of  our  human  life  ?  It 
is  that  we,  by  the  experiences  through  which  we  pass,  be- 
come schooled,  self-developed ;  that  we  grow ;  that  our 
powers  and  faculties  expand  ;  that  we  become  whatever  it 
is  possible  for  us  to  become.  Now,  if  you  put  into  the 
hands  of  people  what  they  are  led  to  believe  is  an  infallible 
guide,  do  you  not  see  how  it  necessarily  takes  away  from 
them  any  reason  for  investigation ;  that  it  leads  directly  to 
stagnation,  to  lack  of  progress ;  that  it  hinders,  restricts, 
cripples  ? 

One  of  the  wisest  things  that  was  ever  said,  quoted  ma"- 


36  My  Creed 

times  and  misunderstood  many  times,  because  not  read  in 
the  light  of  this  thought,  is  that  famous  saying  of  Lessing's, 
—  I  quote  not  the  words,  but  the  thought, —  If  God  should 
hold  out  to  me  in  one  hand  perfect  infallible  truth,  and  in 
the  other  the  privilege  of  seeking  for  truth,  I  would  reply, 
O  God,  truth  is  for  Thee  alone ;  give  me  the  joy  and  the 
labor  of  seeking  for  it. 

Suppose  a  boy  is  struggling  over  a  problem  in  arithmetic 
on  first  entering  school,  what  will  you  do  with  him?  It 
would  please  him  at  the  time,  be  a  great  gratification,  save 
him  a  vast  amount  of  trouble,  if  you  would  show  him  the 
process  and  result,  or  at  any  rate  give  him  the  correct  an- 
swer to  his  question.  But  suppose,  on  the  other  hand,  you 
let  him  labor  over  this  problem,  even  to  heavy  heart-ache 
and  tears ;  suppose,  after  a  long  struggle,  he  is  able  to  reach 
only  a  partially  correct  answer :  even  then  is  he  not  unspeak- 
ably better  off  than  the  other  boy,  to  whom  you  have  given 
the  answer  outright,  and  who  has  not  been  permitted  to  go 
through  the  pain,  the  effort,  the  growth,  that  comes  in  the 
process  of  solving  the  question  ?  So  the  men  and  women 
who  struggle  with  these  great  problems  of  the  universe,  and 
get  only  a  partially  correct  answer,  are  unspeakably  better 
off,  if  they  honestly,  earnestly,  faithfully  attempt  to  find  it 
out,  than  they  would  have  been  if  some  infallible  guide  had 
lifted  them  in  his  arms,  and  saved  them  all  the  trouble  and 
toil  of  the  journey.  For,  when  they  had  reached  the  truth 
in  the  latter  case,  they  would  have  been  puny  and  half-devel- 
oped. In  the  other  case,  they  have  only  partially  found  the 
truth ;  but  they  have  grown  strong,  they  have  broadened, 
deepened,  heightened,  been  made  mighty,  by  the  search. 

Here  we  are,  then,  in  this  new  world,  without  any  infalli- 
ble guide ;  and  yet  note  one  thing.  When  the  world  changed 
its  thought  from  the  old  Ptolemaic  to  the  Copernican  con- 


What  Light  have  we  to  guide  us  37 

ception  of  the  universe,  not  one  single  star  was  put  out,  not 
one  light  was  even  dimmed.  They  shone  with  all  their  old- 
time  lustre ;  nay,  the  number  of  them  discovered  and  added 
to  that  wonder-sky  of  human  thought  is  almost  uncounted. 
So,  when  we  go  out  of  the  old  universe  into  the  new  one,  we 
lose  none  of  the  lights  which  were  lights  by  which  the  men 
of  old  guided  their  feet :  not  one  single  star  of  ethics,  of 
religion,  of  science,  of  human  thought  of  any  kind,  has 
dimmed  its  ray.  Every  real  light  shines  with  its  old-time 
lustre ;  and,  now  that  we  are  free  to  seek,  we  are  finding  new 
stars  in  every  development  of  human  thought.  We  are  per- 
petually told  that  we  have  given  up  old  guides  and  have 
none  left,  that  we  are  all  at  sea,  that  we  are  wandering  in 
a  wilderness,  that  we  do  not  know  where  we  came  from  nor 
where  we  are  going  nor  what  the  journey  is  for ;  while  they 
who  thus  taunt  us  assume  that  they  have  all  these  problems 
clearly  settled,  and  that  we  are  thus  in  danger  of  being  lost, 
because  we  are  not  willing  to  take  them  on  board  as  pilots. 

Let  us  see  what  our  condition  really  is,  whether  it  is  so  very 
dangerous,  after  all.  What  are  the  things  in  doubt  ?  What 
are  the  things  concerning  which  we  have  practical  certainty  ? 
I  wish  to  answer  this  question  by  one  general  statement,  of 
which  a  few  particulars  that  I  shall  add  will  be  illustrations. 

We  are  not  in  doubt  as  to  any  one  single,  great,  important, 
practical  truth, —  not  one.  The  things  we  are  in  doubt  about 
are  almost  entirely  speculative, —  things  that  it  would  be 
rather  pleasant  to  know,  that  it  would  satisfy  our  curiosity  to 
understand,  but  that  are  not  necessary  as  guides  for  life. 

We  do  not  know  with  absolute  certainty  about  the  origin 
of  this  solar  system, —  how  old  it  is,  where  it  came  from,  by 
just  what  process.  We  have  our  theories,  and  think  they  are 
probably  correct ;  but  we  cannot  say  with  certainty.  But 
what  of  it  ?  What  difference  does  it  make  ?  Is  it  a  practical 


38  My  Creed 

question  ?  We  have  the  solid  earth  under  our  feet,  the  blue 
sky  in  the  day-time  over  our  heads,  and  the  infinite,  alluring 
vista  of  stars  at  night.  No  matter  where  they  came  from, 
they  are  here  ;  and  they  are  what  they  are,  and  we  stand  in 
certain  definite  relations  to  them.  We  are  learning  more 
and  more  of  those  physical  forces  by  which  we  are  sur- 
rounded and  of  which  we  are  a  part.  We  are  learning  more 
and  more  to  comprehend  and  control  them.  We  are  bring- 
ing them  so  under  control  that  they  are  ready  to  come  and 
go  at  our  bidding. 

As  one  specific  illustration,  no  man  is  able  to  answer  the 
question,  What  is  electricity?  It  is  an  infinite  mystery,  as 
much  so  as  the  question,  What  is  God  ?  But  we  know  enough 
about  the  working  of  this  mysterious  power  to  guard  our- 
selves against  the  flashes  of  lightning.  We  know  enough 
about  it  to  make  it  run  round  the  world  on  our  errands,  to 
bring  us  next  door  to  the  farthest  points  on  the  planet.  We 
do  not  know  very  much  about  ourselves.  No  man  knows 
precisely  the  origin  of  man, —  his  nature,  how  it  is  that  the 
mind  is  connected  with  the  body,  its  dependence  on  the 
brain,  the  mystery  of  consciousness.  These  things  are  as 
insoluble  to-day,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  as  they  ever  were. 
But  what  of  it  ?  There  is  no  doubt  about  the  fact  that  we 
are  conscious,  that  we  are  living,  that  we  have  minds,  that 
we  think,  that  we  feel,  that  we  hope,  that  we  fear,  that  we 
know,  that  we  are  ignorant.  There  is  no  sort  of  practical 
doubt  as  to  the  great  questions  of  the  relationship  which  we 
ought  to  maintain  toward  each  other  as  persons,  friends,  in 
the  family,  in  society,  in  the  State.  Only  let  us  live  out 
what  we  know,  and  the  kingdom  of  God  would  come  to- 
morrow. 

How  is  it  about  God?  You  can  mystify  any  man  by 
asking  him  a  question  or  two  about  the  Divine.  There  are 


What  Light  have  we  to  guide  us  39 

any  number  of  problems  that  cannot  be  solved ;  but  they  are 
all  on  the  speculative  side.  We  do  not  know  where  God 
was  or  what  he  was  doing  before  this  solar  system  came  into 
being.  We  do  not  know  very  much  about  the  different  per- 
sonalities that  have  played  so  large  a  part  in  theological 
speculation.  Nobody  knows  about  these  things  except  a  few 
people  in  the  Orthodox  Church,  who  have  got  it  all  down 
in  their  creeds.  But  these  are  purely  speculative  matters. 
That  there  is  an  infinite  Power,  who  was  before  we  were,  who 
will  be  when  we  have  passed  away,  who  holds  us  in  his 
arms,  "in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being,"  who 
surrounds  us  on  every  hand,  on  a  knowledge  of  and  obedi- 
ence to  whose  laws  depend  life,  happiness,  well-being, — all 
these  things  that  touch  us,  that  are  practical,  are  not  in 
doubt. 

Then,  once  more,  in  regard  to  destiny.  There  is  no  end 
of  speculation  as  to  what  lies  beyond  that  curtain  that  shuts 
down  before  us,  before  which  we  stand  so  many  hours  listen- 
ing, which  we  try  to  lift,  to  gain  a  glimpse  of  the  farther 
side.  But  what  of  that?  Under  the  guidance  of  the  light 
of  the  law  of  cause  and  effect,  we  know  the  relation  of 
yesterday  to  to-day,  and  of  to-day  to  to-morrow.  We  know 
that  the  past  has  made  the  present ;  and  that  the  present  is 
making  the  future ;  and  that  we  have  the  power  to  modify  in 
some  degree  the  present,  so  as  to  make  the  future  different 
from  what  it  would  be  but  for  that  modification.  All  that  is 
practical,  then,  we  know.  Not  a  shadow  of  doubt  rests 
upon  it.  Therefore,  I  reiterate  that  which  I  said ;  and  they 
who  talk  about  not  knowing  anything,  not  believing  any- 
thing, are  thoughtless,  and  do  themselves  huge  injustice, 
and  those  outside  who  taunt  us  with  not  knowing  anything, 
not  being  certain  of  anything,  not  believing  anything,  are 
guilty  either  of  ignorance  or  slander.  We  know  all  that  we 


4O  My  Creed 

need  to  know  to  make  our  lives  grand  and  sublime,  to  re- 
deem the  present  and.-to  create  a  future. 

Finally,  let  me  give  some  specific  statements  by  way  of 
reply  to  the  question  with  which  we  began.  What  light 
have  we  in  this  new  world  to  guide  us  ?  Here,  again,  let  me 
give  one  general  statement,  which  will  include  all  the  partic- 
ulars that  will  follow.  We  have  all  the  light  there  is,  all  the 
light  that  anybody  has.  Nay,  more.  If  there  be  some  little 
sect,  party,  denomination,  that  shuts  itself  in  some  one  room 
of  God's  many-mansioned  house,  draws  the  curtains  at  the 
windows,  locks  every  door,  and  stops  every  keyhole,  lest  a 
glimpse  of  light  should  come  in  from  some  other  room,  and 
takes  only  for  light  and  guidance  that  which  it  can  see  in 
this  particular  apartment,  instead  of  having  more  light  than 
we  have,  it  has  less ;  for  it  has  the  light  only  of  one  room, 
while  we  have  it  all.  We  have  not  only  the  light  which  the 
Protestant  has, —  and  we  have  all  the  light  which  the  Protes- 
tant has, —  but  we  have  whatever  light  the  Catholic  has  be- 
sides. We  have  all  the  light  of  the  Christian,  undimmed; 
and,  if  there  be  any  light  that  God  has  shed  on  any  other 
part  of  the  world,  that,  too,  is  as  free  to  us  as  that  which 
shines  from  Judea.  Whatever  light  in  any  star  or  heaven 
shines  on  any  country  on  the  globe,  that  light  is  free  and 
open  to  us,  to  use  unprejudiced  in  guiding  our  feet  aright. 

We  have,  then,  as  particulars  under  this  :  — 

1.  All    the    light   of    all    the   saints,   prophets,   religious 
teachers,  of  the  world.     Whatever  they  have  been  able  to 
catch  of  the  eternal  truth  and  to  reflect  for  the  enlightening 
of  the  world  is  open  to  us  to  investigate  and  use. 

2.  We  have  all  the  light  of  all  the  Bibles  of  the  world. 
You   would   wofully    misunderstand    and    misrepresent  my 
meaning,  if  you  should  suppose  that  I  have  intended  to  say 
one  word  derogatory  to  our  Bible.     Not  the  Bible  ought 


What  Light  have  we  to  guide  us  41 

we  to  speak  against.  For  the  sake  of  the  Bible,  and  for  the 
sake  of  the  rational  use  of  it,  we  should  speak  and  fight  for- 
ever against  the  misinterpretation,  the  false  use,  and  the 
false  claims  that  put  it  beyond  our  reasonable  use.  The 
Bible  is  the  noblest  body  of  religious  literature  that  can  be 
found  in  any  one  collection  under  heaven.  No  sane  critic 
has  ever  for  one  moment  questioned  this ;  but  it  is  not  in- 
fallible. It  simply  represents  the  best  religious  life  and 
the  highest  religious  inspiration  of  the  time  when  its  several 
parts  were  written.  We  have  this  Bible,  then,  in  all  that 
it  is  and  all  that  it  can  do  for  us  ;  and  we  have  all  the  Bibles 
of  all  the  other  races,  which,  though  lesser  lights,  are  still 
lights.  There  are  times  in  this  world  when  a  candle  is  of 
much  more  service  than  an  electric  light ;  and  so  some  dim- 
mer ray  of  truth  may,  for  particular  uses  and  occasions,  be 
better  for  us  than  the  glory  of  the  noon-day  sun. 

3.  We  have  all  the  light  of  all  the  discoverers,  all  the 
inventors,  all  the  truth-seekers,  all  the  scientific  investigators 
of  all  nations  and  all  times.     The  results  of  their  labors  are 
open  for  our  use. 

4.  We  have  the  results  of  all  the  experience  of  humanity. 
This  experience  it  is  which,  uttered  by  seers  or  written  in 
Bibles  or  as  part  of  the  scientific  investigation  of  the  world, 
rightly  used,  is  the  great  light  of  the  world.     Men  found  out 
what  conditions  were  helpful  for  them   to  live  in   by  expe- 
rience, what  articles  of  food  were  good   for  them  to  eat  by 
experience  ;  they  found  what  plants,  herbs,  minerals,  might 
be  serviceable  for  medicine,  how  best  to  live   together   in 
families,  how  to  secure  the  highest  type  of  society,  how  to 
establish  the  best  political  organization, —  all   these   things 
were  learned  by  experience  ;  and  the  only  reason  why  men 
are  going  perpetually  astray  is  that  they  have  no  knowledge 
of  this  experience  of  the  past.     Every  little  while,  you  will 


42  My  Creed 

hear  of  some  brand-new  reform  in  political  economy  or 
some  patent  method  for  rejuvenating  the  world ;  but,  if  the 
framer  had  known  a  little  something  of  human  history,  he 
would  have  known  that  the  same  old  panacea  had  been 
tried  over  and  over  again.  There  is  enough  light  in  human 
experience,  only  we  need  to  know  where  it  is,  to  be  educated, 
enlightened,  as  to  its  results. 

5.  We  have  that  which  I  know  not  how  rightly  to  charac- 
terize, but  which  we  sum  up  under  the  name  of  the  ideal. 
What  is  this  ideal  ?  Is  it  the  outshining  of  the  face  of  God 
looking  at  us  through  the  dim  mists  of  the  future  ?  Is  it  the 
first  rays  shooting  up  over  the  globe  of  the  future  of  a  yet 
unrisen  sun,  heralding  a  new  dawn  and  a  better  day  ?  What 
is  this  ideal,  this  dream,  this  vision,  this  foregleam  of  some- 
thing better  than  has  ever  been,  that  shines  with  "  a  light 
that  never  was  on  sea  or  land  "  ?  We  may  not  know,  but 
yet  this  we  may  know :  that  this  ideal  is  a  light  for  the  guid- 
ance of  the  world ;  and  that,  wherever  there  has  been  prog- 
ress in  political  economy,  in  sociology,  in  science,  in  liter- 
ature, in  art,  in  religion,  it  has  been  under  the  impulse  of 
this  ideal,  this  dream  of  something  fairer  than  ever  yet 
came  down  out  of  the  sky. 

There  is  light  enough,  then,  for  all  our  needs.  It  is  not 
for  lack  of  light  that  we  go  astray.  It  is  only  for  lack  of 
heeding  the  light  we  have.  This  light  is  growing  and  in- 
creasing every  day,  age  by  age  ;  and  we  may  rest  in  sure 
confidence  that  it  will  grow  more  and  more,  brighter  and 
brighter,  unto  the  perfect  day. 


RELIGION. 


OUT  of  the  old  universe  into  the  new ;  that  was  our  start- 
ing-point in  this  course  of  sermons.  Then  we  raised  and 
answered  the  question  as  to  what  light  we  had  to  guide  us 
in  this  new  world.  After  having  given  up  the  claimed  infal- 
libilities and  authorities  to  which  men  have  looked  in  the 
past,  we  asked  what  there  was  left  for  us.  This  morning, 
in  the  light  which  we  found  for  our  guidance,  I  ask  you  to 
go  with  me  in  this  great  search  for  religion.  That  is  the 
first,  the  most  pressing  theme  :  it  is  fundamental  to  every- 
thing else  that  will  follow.  Have  we  religion  left?  If  we 
are  able  to  answer  that  question  in  the  affirmative,  then  it 
will  be  pertinent,  before  I  am  through,  to  raise  the  further 
question  as  to  the  aim  of  religion  in  this  modern  world,  as 
to  what  it  is  to  continue  to  exist  for,  and  what  are  some  of 
the  methods  by  which  we  are  to  seek  this  end. 

This  is  no  useless  question  ;  but  it  is  one  that  is  being 
debated  very  widely,  both  by  those  who  hope  and  those  who 
fear.  Thousands  hope  that  religion  is  to  be  outgrown. 
Other  thousands  fear  it.  And  this  fear,  this  lurking  distrust, 
this  lack  of  vital  faith  in  God,  manifests  itself  in  the  dis- 
quietude, in  the  anger,  in  the  opposition,  of  those  who  are 
afraid  to  have  the  great  problems  of  the  world  freely  dis- 
cussed, lest  they  should  find  out  that,  after  all,  the  world  is 
an  illusion;  that  there  is  no  real  basis  for  their  faith, —  that 
faith  which  they  claim  has  been  delivered  to  them  from  the 
God  of  the  universe  himself. 


44  My  Creed 

There  are  several  classes  of  persons  who  either  hope  or 
fear  that  religion  has  received  its  death-blow ;  that  it  is 
something  which  fitted  well  enough  into  the  old  crude  uni- 
verse of  the  past,  but  that  it  is  not  anything  which  belongs 
to  the  free,  earnest  thought  of  those  who  dare  to  look  the 
world  in  the  face,  and  receive  without  flinching  the  answers 
to  their  questions.  The  Orthodox  Church  naturally  looks 
upon  us  who  have  rejected  this  claimed  authority  as  irrelig- 
ious. We  ought  not  to  wonder  at  this :  it  is  only  logical 
and  consistent.  Now  and  then,  you  find  a  liberal  who  won- 
ders at  the  narrowness  that  does  not  allow  the  use  of  one 
of  the  old  churches  for  a  different  type  of  service.  Yet  it 
is  purely  unreasonable  that  we  should  expect  it.  It  means 
for  them  suicide,  if  they  permit  it.  They  believe  that  they 
have  received  by  miracle  an  infallible  revelation  from  the 
one  only  God  of  the  universe,  of  the  one  only  religion. 
This  is  the  foundation  on  which  they  build  their  Church. 
And,  if  this  be  so,  then,  of  course,  he  who  rejects  that  reve- 
lation and  that  conception  of  religion  rejects  all  the  religion 
there  is ;  for  on  that  theory  there  can  be  but  one.  It  is 
perfectly  natural  then,  perfectly  logical,  perfectly  consist- 
ent, that  they  should  look  upon  us  as  without  God  and  with- 
out hope  in  the  world,  and  as  having  turned  away  from 
religion  and  gone  out  into  a  life  that  is  secular,  that  is  in 
the  true  sense  of  that  word  irreligious.  This  type  of  think- 
ing is  not  confined  to  those  who  consistently  stand  by  these 
old  beliefs.  There  are  those  who  call  themselves  liberal, 
who  have  accepted  the  results  of  modern  investigation,  who 
still  keep  in  their  minds  as  the  one  definition  of  religion 
that  which  belongs  to  the  old,  and  which  comes  down  to 
them  by  tradition.  Religion  to  them  is  something  apart 
from  and  outside  the  natural  order  of  the  world ;  and,  just 
as  fast  as  they  cease  to  believe  in  any  supernatural  interfer- 


Religion  45 

ence  in  the  order  of  nature,  they  are  under  the  impression 
that  religion  is  being  done  away. 

I  wish  to  call  your  attention  to  one  type  of  this  thought. 
Mr.  Philip  Gilbert  Hamerton  is  a  well-known  writer  on  art 
and  other  subjects.  In  one  of  his  later  books,  perhaps  the 
last  one,  entitled  Human  Intercourse,  there  are  two  very 
interesting  and  suggestive  chapters.  One  is  entitled  "  How 
we  are  apparently  becoming  less  Religious."  The  next  one 
is,  "  How  we  are  really  becoming  less  Religious  " ;  for  he 
believes  that  we  are  ceasing  to  be  religious,  and  are  be- 
coming secular.  He  gives  one  or  two  illustrations  to  show 
the  kind  of  thought  which  he  holds.  He  tells  the  story  of 
the  Athenian  general,  Nikias,  who  was  besieging  the  city  of 
Syracuse.  The  siege  having  failed,  he  was  ready  to  retreat, 
but  just  about  the  time  he  was  to  give  his  orders  there  was 
an  eclipse  of  the  moon  ;  and  he  consulted  the  soothsayers  as 
to  what  it  meant,  thinking,  no  doubt,  that  this  was  some 
message  from  the  gods.  The  priests  told  him  that  he  must 
wait  three  times  nine  days  before  he  raised  the  siege ;  that 
this  was  the  will  of  the  gods.  Obedient  to  this,  he  stays 
there,  his  soldiers  dying  on  every  hand,  he  himself  becoming 
more  and  more  surrounded  and  enmeshed  by  the  forces  of 
the  enemy,  until  his  army  is  ruined ;  and  the  whole  expedi- 
tion ends  most  disastrously.  This,  according  to  Mr.  Ham- 
erton, is  what  it  means  to  believe  in  religion  ;  and  he  says 
the  moment  that  we  understand  that  the  eclipse  of  the  moon 
is  a  natural  thing,  that  moment  we  cease  to  have  any  relig- 
ious emotion  as  connected  with  anything  of  that  sort.  We 
henceforward  look  upon  it  as  pure  mechanism,  as  part  of 
the  natural  order  of  the  world.  He  tells  another  story  of 
an  escape  from  an  accident  on  a  railroad  train.  There  was 
a  priest  on  the  train,  who,  just  about  the  time  of  the  crisis 
of  the  accident,  uttered  a  prayer ;  and  all  those  who  be- 


46  My  Creed 

lieved  with  him  in  supernatural  interference  attributed  the 
escape  of  the  passengers  to  this  prayer.  He  gives  this  as 
an  illustration  of  the  religious  way  of  looking  at  the  world. 
Those  who  had  given  up  this  idea  treated  this  deliverance 
as  natural,  and  accounted  for  it  on  scientific  principles. 
These  two  points  I  have  used  to  illustrate  some  modern 
theories  as  to  what  religion  means.  Religion  with  them  is 
some  outside  supernatural  interference  with  the  order  of 
nature  ;  and,  if  we  cease  to  believe  in  that,  we  cease  to  be 
religious. 

There  is  another  type  of  thought  somewhat  akin  to  this, 
and  yet  different  enough  to  call  for  separate  mention. 
There  are  those,  and  perhaps  the  French  philosopher  and 
scientist  Comte  may  be  mentioned  as  the  best  example  of 
them,  who  look  upon  the  mythological  ideas  of  the  childhood 
of  the  world,  and  the  religion  founded  upon  them,  as  some- 
thing to  be  outgrown ;  recognizing  the  fact,  which  of  course 
no  one  thinks  of  denying,  that,  as  fast  as  these  people  became 
intelligent,  they  have  left  this  religion  behind  them.  They 
carry  this  train  of  reasoning  so  far  as  to  say  that,  as  fast 
as  the  world  becomes  wiser,  it  outgrows  one  after  another 
the  religious  theories  and  religious  types  of  thought  which 
belong  to  the  cruder  stage  of  civilization.  The  philosophy 
of  these  men  has  come  to  be  a  proverbial  phrase, —  that  igno- 
rance is  the  mother  of  devotion.  If  ignorance  ceased,  devo- 
tion would  die  along  with  it.  Comte  carried  this  thought 
so  far  as  to  say  that,  to  the  enlightened  man,  the  heavens 
no  longer  declare  the  glory  of  God  :  they  declare  only  the 
glory  of  the  astronomers,  Newton,  Laplace,  and  their  peers. 
Those  who  hold  this  idea  feel  that  religion  is  only  a  misin- 
terpretation of  natural  phenomena ;  and,  as  soon  as  people 
become  wise,  it  will  be  outgrown  and  left  behind. 

Then  there  are  thousands  of  people,  not  very  well  versed 


Religion  47 

perhaps  in  philosophy  or  science,  yet  with  a  smattering  of 
these,  who  are  accustomed  to  think  that  those  persons  who 
still  remain  religious  are  not  quite  so  wise  as  the  enlightened 
few,  among  whom,  of  course,  they  always  include  themselves, 
who  have  seen  through  the  hollowness  of  it  all.  They  are 
ready  to  treat  it  benevolently  and  gently  as  a  phase  of  the 
childhood  development  of  the  world;  but  they  look  upon 
themselves  as  having  outgrown  it,  as  being  beyond  anything 
of  that  sort,  as  having  dismissed  all  these  conceptions  of  the 
universe. 

Now,  then,  in  order  to  find  out  whether  these  things  are  so, 
I  propose  to  ask  you  to  join  with  me  in  a  serious  examination 
of  a  few  of  the  varied  types  of  religious  thought,  feeling,  and 
life  developed  in  the  course  of  human  history,  and  see  if  we 
can  find  out  what  is  the  essential  thing  in  this  matter  of  re- 
ligion and  what  is  only  dress  and  accident.  In  this  way, 
perhaps,  we  shall  be  able  to  answer  the  question,  Is  religion 
something  to  be  outgrown  and  left  behind  as  humanity 
advances  ? 

Let  us  take  at  the  outset  one  of  the  crudest  and  lowest  types 
of  religion  with  which  we  are  acquainted.  We  will  begin 
with  the  fetich  worshipper,  the  barbaric  man  who  in  some 
curious  way,  we  cannot  stop  to  examine  how  or  why,  has 
come  to  reverence  a  stone  or  stick,  a  serpent,  toad,  or  tree, 
no  matter  what.  He  has  come  to  look  upon  them  as  the 
residence  of  some  mysterious  spirit  or  power  of  which  he 
stands  in  awe.  He  believes  that  in  this  stick  or  stone  or 
toad  is  a  power  invisible  and  mighty ;  one  that  can  hurt  him 
if  he  does  not  keep  on  the  right  side  of  it ;  one  that  can  help 
him,  if  he  can  win  its  favor ;  one  that  wants  certain  things  of 
him ;  one  that  would  like  to  be  fed,  perhaps,  or  to  have  a 
sacrifice  offered,  or  prayers  made,  or  some  especial  honor 
paid  to  it ;  that  would  like  to  be  flattered,  to  be  called  by 


48  My  Creed 

high-sounding  titles.  Perhaps  it  may  be  the  spirit  of  some 
dead  chief  within  it ;  but,  whatever  it  is,  here  is  a  mysterious, 
invisible  power,  and  this  fetich  worshipper  offers  that  power 
gifts,  prays  to  it,  praises  it,  adores  it.  Here  is  religion,  here 
is  worship,  here  are  all  the  essentials  of  what  we  find  in  any 
higher  type  of  life.  Now  what  is  this  man  doing  ?  What 
does  he  think  he  is  doing?  He  recognizes  a  power  here 
which  is  not  himself.  He  recognizes  himself  as  standing  in 
some  sort  of  relation  to  that  power.  He  has  come  in  some 
way  to  believe  that  that  power  wants  him  to  do  certain 
things,  and  that,  if  he  does  these  things,  he  will  establish 
a  better  relationship  between  himself  and  that  power  than 
already  exists.  By  better,  I  mean  more  advantageous.  If 
the  power  is  angry,  he  will  appease  it.  If  it  loves  him,  he 
will  gratify  that  love.  He  will  placate  its  wrath,  and  win  its 
favor.  This  is  what  the  fetich  worshipper  tries  to  do. 

Leave  that,  and  come  to  a  higher  type.  Stand  with  me 
in  Solomon's  temple  in  Jerusalem,  at  the  height  of  the  glory 
of  Israel's  worship.  The  temple  porch  is  thronged  with 
those  who  have  come  from  the  different  portions  of  the 
kingdom  to  attend  one  of  the  great  festivals.  The  service 
is  going  on.  The  choir  is  chanting  some  of  those  great 
psalms  that  are  still  read  as  parts  of  our  religious  service. 
The  sacrifice  has  been  offered.  The  high-priest  has  entered 
the  mysterious  holy  of  holies,  as  he  was  accustomed  to  once 
a  year,  to  perform  the  most  important  rite  of  their  religion. 
When  this  is  done,  he  comes  out  and  blesses  the  people. 
They  are  hushed  and  bowed,  and  feel  that  somehow  or  other 
the  favor  of  their  God  is  brooding  over  them  and  giving 
them  peace.  Now,  what  are  these  people  doing  ?  What  do 
they  think  they  are  doing?  They  recognize, —  no  longer 
associated  with  a  stick  or  stone  or  serpent, —  they  recognize 
a  power  invisible,  mysterious,  mighty,  that  is  not  themselves. 


Religion  49 

They  recognize  themselves  as  standing  in  certain  relations 
to  this  power.  They  believe  this  power  wants  them  to  do 
certain  things,  to  feel  in  certain  ways,  to  bring  sacrifices,  to 
offer  praise,  and  that,  in  consideration  of  their  doing  this, 
they  will  establish  better  relations  between  themselves  and 
this  power,  and  win  his  favor.  Here,  again,  better  relation- 
ship means  more  advantageous  relationships  to  themselves. 
Here  you  see,  then,  is  only  another  type  of  what  we  saw  in 
the  case  of  the  fetich  worshipper. 

Let  us  visit  for  a  moment  St.  Peter's  at  Rome.  The 
Jewish  religion,  so  far  as  the  domination  of  the  civilized 
world  is  concerned,  has  passed  away;  and  Christianity  has 
taken  its  place.  They  are  celebrating  one  of  their  great 
services  in  this  magnificent  cathedral.  It  is  crowded  with 
loving  and  reverent  hearts.  The  priests  enter,  the  host  is 
lifted  up,  and  the  people  fall  on  their  knees  in  adoration. 
Perhaps  the  supreme  pontiff  is  present,  and  blesses  the  wait- 
ing people.  What  have  these  people  been  doing?  What 
do  they  think  they  are  doing  ?  Is  it  not  clear  that  they  are 
thinking  of  a  mysterious,  invisible  power  outside  of  them- 
selves, that  can  help  them,  that  can  hurt  them  ?  They  are 
thinking  of  themselves  as  standing  in  certain  relations  with 
this  power.  They  believe  that  he  wants  them  to  do  certain 
things,  to  cherish  certain  feelings,  to  hold  certain  faiths,  and 
that,  in  consideration  of  their  doing  it,  better  relations,  more 
advantageous,  will  be  established  between  themselves  and 
this  power.  They  will  be  better  off  after  the  service  than 
they  were  before.  Is  not  here,  again,  essentially  the  same 
thing  that  we  saw  in  Solomon's  temple  and  in  the  fetich 
worshipper  ? 

To  give  one  more  illustration.  By  a  great  leap  down  the 
centuries,  let  us  come  here  to  this  service  this  morning. 
What  are  we  here  for  in  our  simple  service  ?  What  do  we 


50  My  Creed 

think  we  are  doing  ?  I  trust  that  you  are  here  for  some 
nobler  purpose  than  merely  to  hear  me  speak.  I  certainly 
am  here  for  something  higher  and  nobler  than  to  attempt 
your  entertainment.  Had  I  no  deeper  motive  than  that,  this 
would  be  the  last  morning  that  I  should  ever  stand  here. 
You  believe  and  I  believe  that  this  meeting,  this  service, 
has  some  sort  of  bearing  on  life;  that  we  will  be  a  little 
wiser,  a  little  better,  on  account  of  it.  You  may  call  it  what- 
ever you  will,  but  we  recognize  a  power  outside  of  ourselves, 
manifested  in  star,  in  street  dust,  in  dewdrop,  in  flower. 
We  recognize  the  power  that  encloses  us  around  like  the 
air,  that  is  behind  us,  besetting  us  on  every  side,  which  is 
under  us  and  over  us,  in  which  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being,  out  of  which  we  have  come,  on  which  we  depend 
every  moment  of  our  lives.  We  believe  that  we  are  standing 
in  some  sort  of  relation  to  this  power,  and  believe  that  it  is 
possible  by  study,  by  higher  thoughts,  nobler  feelings,  by 
living  better,  by  studying  the  truth,  by  kindling  our  emotions, 
by  this  sendee,  we  shall  become  a  little  wiser,  a  little  better, 
shall  think  more  nobly,  act  more  justly.  We  believe  that 
in  some  way  this  service  bears  on  this  great  question  of 
getting  into  better,  truer,  higher  relations  with  the  infinite 
power  that  closes  us  around.  If  we  do  not  believe  it,  then 
we  are  wasting  our  time  by  being  here.  Here,  then,  are  the 
essentials  that  we  found  in  St.  Peter's,  in  Solomon's  temple, 
in  the  actions  of  the  fetich  worshipper. 

I  wish  to  carry  this  out  one  step  further.  Let  us  take  the 
case  of  Mr.  Huxley  and  Mr.  Spencer.  They  think,  doubt- 
less, that  they  have  gone  beyond  us.  I  presume  they  are 
not  regular  attendants  at  any  church.  Perhaps  this  may  be 
quite  excusable.  I  have  no  judgment  to  pronounce  on  that 
subject.  But  they  are  agnostics.  They  claim  to  know  noth- 
ing concerning  God  or  concerning  our  possessing  any  soul. 


Religion  5 1 

Yet  the  one  thing  for  which  they  live,  that  which  they  think 
about,  that  for  which  they  are  laboring  and  striving  every 
moment  of  their  lives,  is  to  learn  something  more  about  the 
nature  of  this  mysterious,  infinite,  invisible  power  that 
closes  us  around,  that  is  not  ourselves;  that  they  may  do 
what  they  can  to  establish  better  relations  between  humanity 
and  this  infinite  power  that  works  in  and  through  the  uni- 
verse. Paul  may  call  the  work  of  religion  reconciliation 
with  God.  Mr.  Spencer  may  call  it  adjustment  to  one's 
environment ;  but  the  essential  thing  is  here,  all  the  essen- 
tials are  here,  which  we  find  in  our  own  case,  in  St.  Peter's, 
in  Solomon's  temple,  in  the  case  of  the  fetich  worshipper. 
Examine  any  type  of  religion  you  please,  and  you  will  find 
that  the  essential  things  in  it  are  a  recognition  on  the  part 
of  men  of  a  power  outside  of  them  that  is  not  themselves, 
that  can  help  or  hurt  them,  on  which  they  are  dependent ; 
the  recognition  of  certain  relations  existing  between  them- 
selves and  this  power ;  and  the  further  recognition  that  it  is 
possible  to  improve  these  relations.  There  never  existed  a 
religion  whose  ultimate  aim  and  end  was  not  just  this  im- 
provement of  the  relations  which  were  supposed  to  exist 
between  men  and  some  power  outside  of  themselves  that 
was  not  themselves. 

This  is  the  object  of  all  science.  Science  cannot  escape 
it.  Let  a  man  call  himself  an  atheist,  and  he  does  not 
escape  it.  He  still  recognizes  this  power  manifested  in  the 
world,  in  the  order  of  nature,  and  his  own  relation  to  this 
power ;  and  he  knows  and  will  tell  you  that  the  only  object 
of  all  life  is  to  improve  the  relation  which  exists  between 
himself  and  this  power,  no  matter  what  name  he  gives  it, 
whether  he  believes  that  it  is  personal  or  impersonal,  con- 
scious or  unconscious,  living  or  dead. 

The  essentials  of  religion  then,  from  the  fetich  worshipper 


52  My  Creed 

to  the  highest  conceivable  human  thought,  are  precisely 
the  same  and  forever  unchanging.  You  cannot  conceive  of 
their  being  changed  or  left  behind.  So  long  as  there  is  a 
human  being  still  capable  of  thinking  and  feeling,  so  long  as 
man  recognizes  outside  himself  a  power  that  is  not  himself, 
so  long  as  he  recognizes  himself  as  standing  in  relation  to 
this  power,  and  the  possibility  of  bettering  that  relation,  of 
improving  human  life, —  so  long  will  the  essential  eternal 
principles  of  religion  abide. 

When  people  talk  about  religion's  dying,  you  may  always 
feel  sure  that  they  are  talking  about  some  particular  type 
of  religion,  some  theory,  some  theology.  Let  all  the  relig- 
ions die,  if  you  choose ;  let  all  the  theories  be  forgotten ;  let 
all  the  theologies  crumble  into  dust ;  let  all  Bibles  be  blotted 
out,  even  all  memories  of  the  past,  so  that  there  shall  not 
even  be  any  Buddhism,  Confucianism,  Parseeism,  Christian- 
ity; let  men  even  forget  that  there  were  ever  any  such  forces 
in  the  universe, —  and  they  would  be  under  the  absolute  ne- 
cessity of  beginning  a  religious  life  the  very  next  breath  they 
drew ;  for  religion  is  a  part  of  the  universe  itself. 

Now,  then,  we  are  ready  to  ask  the  question  as  to  what 
the  aim  of  religion  must  be  among  those  who  have  accepted 
liberal  thought. 

Christianity  throughout  almost  its  entire  history  has  made 
its  one  avowed  aim  to  be  to  deliver  humanity  from  sin  and 
to  secure  its  salvation  in  another  world.  The  redemption 
of  man  from  the  results  of  the  fall, —  this  has  been  the  work 
of  Christianity.  Of  course,  we  can  no  longer  make  that  the 
point  for  which  we  are  striving.  We  recognize  no  fall.  We 
do  not  believe  in  the  view  of  sin  that  has  been  held  and 
taught  by  the  old  faith.  We  recognize  evil  and  wrong,  but 
not  that  which  they  call  "  sin."  Redemption,  then,  from  the 
result  of  this  fall,  cannot  be  the  one  thing  we  are  striving 
after.  What,  then,  is  it?  We  recognize  evil,  suffering,  dis- 


Religion  53 

ease,  crime,  heart-break,  all  the  sorrows  that  flesh  is  heir  to. 
We  recognize  human  imperfection,  the  possibility  of  personal 
and  social  growth.  We  dream  of  an  ideal  and  perfect  hu- 
manity. The  one  thing,  then,  after  which  we  aim,  is  human 
deliverance  from  evil  of  every  kind,  and  the  attainment  of 
human  perfection.  The  one  thing  we  seek  is  life,  life  in  all 
its  fulness,  breadth,  depth,  height, —  life,  perfect  life.  This 
means  salvation  now  from  every  conceivable  form  and  type 
of  evil.  It  means  salvation  forever,  so  long  as  life  may  con- 
tinue. 

Instead  then  of  religion's  having  grown  something  thinner 
and  less  substantial,  and  being  in  danger  of  fading  away,  like 
the  mists  of  the  valley  when  the  sun  is  high,  we  believe  that 
religion  is  something  so  broad,  so  deep,  so  high,  so  inclusive, 
that  nothing  that  touches  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  hu- 
manity is  beyond  its  range.  Religion,  rightly  defined,  in- 
cludes art,  literature,  music,  science,  government,  sociology. 
It  means  life,  fuller  life.  For  what  is  art?  Art  is  only  an 
attempt  to  reconcile  our  broken  thoughts  about  the  beauty 
of  the  world  with  the  perfect  ideals  of  its  beauty.  It  touches 
our  sense  of  beauty  with  the  reality  of  the  infinite  beauty,  of 
which  all  our  imperfect  glimpses  are  but  partial  expressions. 
What  is  literature  ?  Only  an  attempt  to  give  fine,  fitting, 
perfect  expression  to  the  highest  dreams  and  thoughts  and 
feelings  of  the  world;  that  is,  to  reconcile  our  imperfect 
thought  and  feeling  with  the  perfect  thought  of  which  we 
dream.  What  is  music?  Only  our  attempt  to  express  the 
infinite  harmony,  to  catch  some  strains  of  that  perfect  sons; 
that  was  heard  when  the  morning  stars  sang  together.  What 
is  science  ?  Only  our  attempt  to  discover  and  utter  some 
part  of  the  infinite  truth  of  things.  What  is  government  ? 
Only  our  attempt  to  express  in  society  some  part  of  the 
divine  order.  What  is  sociology?  Only  our  attempt  to 
develop  humanity  in  its  relations  into  the  ideal  and  perfect 


54  My  Creed 

man.  All  these  things  are  only  parts  of  this  attempt  at  rec- 
onciliation, at  adjustment, —  attempts  to  better  the  relations 
in  which  we  stand  to  this  infinite  life  and  power. 

Consider  a  moment.  When  we  as  persons  are  completely 
reconciled  within  the  limits  of  our  own  personality, —  that  is, 
when  the  body  and  the  mind  and  the  heart  and  the  spirit  are 
rightly  related  and  adjusted  to  each  other  in  perfect  har- 
mony, when  the  lower  is  subordinated  to  the  higher, —  then 
there  is  the  perfect  man  or  the  perfect  woman.  They  may 
grow  larger,  may  carry  out  more  fully  the  ideal  that  they 
have  attained.  And  when  in  society  there  is  perfect  har- 
mony, no  longer  any  injustice,  no  longer  any  wrong,  no 
longer  any  hate,  but  peace  and  brotherhood,  then  the  perfect 
world,  the  perfect  ideal  of  society,  is  attained.  And,  when 
the  perfected  individual  and  the  perfect  society  are  in  per- 
fect adjustment  to  all  the  forces  in  this  infinite  universe  that 
closes  us  round  and  touches  us  on  every  hand,  then  we  are 
reconciled  to  God,  as  Paul  would  phrase  it;  then  we  are 
perfectly  religious.  Religion  is  not  outgrown  even  then. 
It  has  only  come  to  perfect  efflorescence,  only  reached  the 
height  of  its  true  development. 

Now,  then,  as  to  the  methods.  I  have  given  you  the  aim 
of  religion,  broadly  considered.  By  what  methods  shall  we 
seek  this  end  ?  How  much,  for  example,  of  the  mechanism 
of  religion,  as  it  has  existed  in  the  past,  is  antiquated  and 
useless  for  our  purpose  to-day  in  the  New  World  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  that  any  method  is  justified 
which  helps  on  the  result.  The  methods  may  vary  infi- 
nitely, according  to  the  varying  types  of  thought  and  feeling 
and  character  and  development  among  men.  Anything  that 
helps  us  to  attain  the  end  of  a  perfected  humanity  is  thereby 
justified  as  a  religious  method. 

Three  things  we  need  to  gain.  We  need  to  have  true 
thought,  right  feeling,  and  right  action  in  dealing  with  each 


Religion  5  5 

other.  Thought,  feeling,  action,  then  are  necessary ;  and  so 
whatever  helps  to  truer  thought,  to  nobler  feeling,  whatever 
becomes  a  motive  to  better  action  in  religion, —  all  these 
things  are  justified  as  methods  of  religious  activity. 

First  and  above  all  things,  we  need  utter  freedom  of 
thought,  in  order  that  we  may  seek  the  truth  untrammelled. 
Then  we  need  whatever  can  touch,  inspire,  and  uplift  the 
emotions.  Finally,  we  need  anything  that  can  become  a 
motive  to  nobler  living. 

Let  me  touch  on  a  few  of  these  things  that  have  been 
most  intimately  associated  with  the  religious  life  of  the  past. 
The  Church, —  will  that  be  outgrown  ?  I  think  not.  It  will 
change  its  form.  It  will  base  itself  on  different  foundations. 
It  will  moderate  or  change  its  claims.  It  will  no  longer 
claim  the  kind  of  authority  which  it  has  held  in  the  past. 
But  what  is  the  association  that  we  call  the  Church  ?  It  is 
a  voluntary  organization  of  persons  having  a  common  pur- 
pose. So  long,  then,  as  people  are  accustomed  to  organize 
in  all  other  directions,  why  should  it  not  be  rational,  and 
why  should  we  not  believe  that  it  will  continue  to  be  practi- 
cable, for  them  to  organize  in  religion  ?  And  such  an  organ- 
ization is  in  all  essentials  a  church. 

Will  worship  remain  ?  So  long  as  men  see  anything 
above  them  to  admire,  to  strive  after,  so  long  not  only  will 
they  worship,  but  they  do  worship ;  precisely  that  is  worship. 
The  essence  of  worship  is  nothing  else  than  admiration  for 
something  that  men  conceive  to  be  above  them.  Worship, 
then,  is  a  part  of  every  true  and  noble  man.  No  man  ever 
yet  made  progress  in  any  direction  except  under  the  im- 
pulse of  worship.  Worship  is  the  glimpsing  of  the  ideal  and 
seeking  its  attainment. 

What  about  religious  teachers  and  founders  ?  Will  they 
be  outgrown  ?  Some  of  them.  In  so  far  as  they  caught 
sight  of  the  eternal  truth,  and  voiced  it  for  man,  in  so  far 


56  My  Creed 

they  will  remain  leaders,  inspirers,  and  teachers  of  humanity. 
Emerson  has  said  that 

"  One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  hath  never  lost." 

So  far  as  these  men  have  caught  the  whispers  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  so  far  they  will  remain  serene  guiding  powers 
and  leaders  of  human  thought  and  feeling;  and  Jesus,  I 
believe,  above  all, —  not  for  any  supernatural  reason,  but  for 
the  simple  reason  that  he  saw  and  uttered  more  of  helpful, 
inspiring,  eternal  truth  than  any  other  religious  founder. 

Rituals,  forms  of  service,  holy  days,  holy  places, —  will 
they  remain?  In  so  far  as  these  things  are  able  to  help 
man,  as  they  are  the  manifestation  of  that  which  is  vital 
in  religious  life,  as  they  touch  the  heart,  kindle  the  feelings, 
lift  the  soul,  so  far  they  will  remain,  and  ought  to  remain. 

Will  the  Bibles  remain  ?  The  Bible  of  the  modern  world 
is  not  bound  between  any  two  covers.  It  is  not  any  one 
book.  We  are  free  to  take,  not  only  that  which  is  in  our 
Bible,  but  that  which  is  in  any  Bible.  And  whatever  is  a 
part  of  divine  revelation,  whatever  is  truth  to  the  intellect, 
whatever  is  inspiration  for  the  heart,  whatever  is  a  motive 
power  for  nobler  action  in  all  Bibles,  in  all  writings,  in  all 
literatures, —  these  will  constitute  the  sacred  Scriptures  of 
the  religion  of  the  coming  age. 

Religion,  then,  will  remain.  It  will  remain  the  grandest, 
noblest  interest  of  humanity.  When  humanity  becomes 
perfect,  religion  will  not  be  antiquated.  It  will  only  be  the 
perfect  ideal  of  that  which  humanity  has  attained.  It  en- 
closes us  like  the  air  we  breathe.  It  is  the  sea  on  which  we 
sail.  When,  then,  some  shipmaster  can  outsail  his  horizon, 
when  some  bird  can  fly  beyond  the  limits  of  the  air  in  which 
it  finds  the  leverage  for  its  wings,  then  we  may  think  religion 
will  be  outgrown. 


GOD. 


IN  his  famous  essay  on  Atheism,  Lord  Bacon  says,  "  A 
little  philosophy  inclineth  men's  minds  to  atheism ;  but 
depth  in  philosophy  bringeth  men's  minds  about  to  religion." 
It  is  a  common  cry  at  the  present  time  that  the  tendency  of 
modern  thought  is  atheistic  and  infidel.  This  cry  is  raised 
by  those  who  are  afraid  of  modern  thought,  and  also  by  a 
certain  class  of  persons  who  suppose  themselves  to  be  in 
sympathy  with  it.  The  tendency  is  toward  atheism,  if  you 
mean  by  that  simply  disbelief  in  certain  old  conceptions  of 
God.  But  people  forget  that  an  idol  may  be  made  out  of 
thoughts  as  well  as  out  of  silver,  or  gold,  or  wood.  They 
forget  that  disbelief  in  idols,  whether  they  are  idols  of  the 
brain  or  the  work  of  the  hand,  while  atheistic  to  the  wor- 
shippers of  these  idols,  may  be  grandly  theistic  from  the 
stand-point  of  the  higher  thought  about  the  world.  The  ten- 
dency of  modern  thought  is  really  atheistic  on  the  part  of  a 
large  number  of  shallow  thinkers,  those  persons  who  possess 
a  little  philosophy,  as  Bacon  says, —  those  who  illustrate  that 
line  of  Pope's,  the  thought  of  which  was  probably  borrowed 
from  Bacon, — "  A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing."  But 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  tendency  at  the  present  time  in  the 
midst  of  these  great  revolutions  through  which  we  are  pass- 
ing is  chiefly  theistic,  and  that  we  are  to  come  to  a  finer, 
nobler,  deeper,  higher  conception  of  God  than  the  world  has 
ever  dreamed  of  before.  It  will  be  my  purpose  this  morning 


58  My  Creed 

to  illustrate  this  statement  so  far  as  I  am  able  in  the  time  at 
my  disposal. 

In  order  that  we  may  comprehend  the  drift  of  modern 
thinking,  and  that  we  may  see  that  it  is  only  growth, —  not 
break,  not  reversal,  not  retrogression, —  I  need  to  take  you 
back  over  ground  that  will  be  more  or  less  familiar  to  you, 
and  call  attention  to  some  of  the  thoughts  of  the  early  world 
about  God,  to  show  you  how  natural, —  the  world  and  man 
being  what  they  were, —  how  inevitable,  those  thoughts  were. 

In  order  to  understand  the  condition  of  the  childhood 
world,  we  need  by  a  process  of  imagination  to  blot  out  of 
existence  all  the  learning,  the  culture,  the  literature,  of  the 
last  ten,  fifteen,  twenty,  perhaps  fifty  thousand  years ;  and  we 
need  not  only  to  blot  out  these  results  of  human  thought, 
but  to  remember  that  we  must  also  diminish  in  our  imagina- 
tion the  power  of  thought  of  the  human  brain,  the  result  of 
which  has  been  all  this  development  of  the  world.  For  the 
brain  of  man  has  grown ;  and  it  is  out  of  this  growth  of  the 
brain  that  these  higher  and  finer  conceptions  have  sprung. 
The  external  institutions,  the  written  thoughts,  of  the  world, 
have  always  kept  pace  with  the  developing  capacity  of  the 
human  brain.  As  we  go  back,  then,  to  this  childhood  condi- 
tion of  the  world,  it  is  perfectly  natural  that  people  then 
should  have  had  their  childish  thoughts  about  themselves, 
about  the  universe,  about  the  mysterious  powers  which  they 
recognized  about  them,  which  they  called  gods  and  wor- 
shipped. It  is  perfectly  natural  that  they  should  have 
thought  of  this  power  not  as  one,  as  we  do  to-day,  but  should 
have  thought  of  powers  uncounted.  Wherever  they  saw  the 
manifestation  of  force,  there  they  recognized,  and  were  com- 
pelled to  by  their  mental  condition,  the  manifestation  of 
some  individual  power.  The  power  in  the  sun  was  not  to 
them  the  same  power  that  is  in  the  lightning,  in  the  growth 


God  59 

of  the  blade  of  grass  or  the  blush  of  the  cheek.  They  had 
no  such  mental  grasp  of  the  universe  as  would  enable  them 
to  think  of  it  under  this  conception  of  unity.  There  were 
just  as  many  mysterious  powers  as  there  were  manifestations 
of  force.  But  it  would  be  perhaps  a  matter  of  accident  as 
to  which  one  of  these  powers  they  should  pay  their  worship. 
Some  local  accident,  some  peculiar  life  experience,  would 
determine  that  this  particular  man  should  worship  what  he 
would  think  of  as  the  ghost  of  an  ancestor  or  the  mysterious 
force  manifested  in  the  lightning,  the  wind,  a  tree,  or  con- 
nected in  his  mind  with  an  animal  or  a  reptile.  These  were 
perfectly  natural  thoughts  at  that  time,  quite  as  natural  as 
our  higher  conceptions  in  which  we  rejoice  to-day.  Fetich- 
ism,  polytheism, —  these  grew  out  of  the  condition  of  things. 
But  as  there  was  social  advance,  as  individuals  coalesced 
into  families,  as  families  aggregated  into  tribes,  and  tribes 
grew  into  larger  organizations  called  nations,  so  there  went 
on  a  corresponding  process  of  development  in  their  thought 
about  these  mysterious  powers;  and  some  one  of  these 
powers  came  to  be  in  their  minds  the  one  God,  not  of  the 
world,  but  the  one  God  of  their  people,  the  only  supreme 
power  in  their  religion,  the  one  that  claimed  their  allegiance, 
to  whom  they  offered  worship.  This  is  the  stage  of  human 
thought  which  Prof.  Max  Miiller  has  called  henotheism,  a 
condition  of  the  human  mind  in  which  there  was  not  yet 
the  belief  in  one  God  only,  but  the  belief  in  one  God  for 
a  particular  tribe  or  people.  We  can  illustrate  this  by  the 
condition  of  the  Hebrews  during  the  early  stages  of  their 
history.  Jehovah  was  their  God  ;  but  it  never  occurred  to 
them  to  doubt  the  real  existence  of  Dagon,  the  god  of  the 
Philistines,  or  Chemosh  the  God  of  the  Moabites,  or  the 
different  gods  of  the  Egyptians.  These  were  real  gods;  only, 
they  were  not  their  gods.  They  owed  them  no  allegiance, 


60  My  Creed 

no  worship :  they  looked  upon  them  as  enemies  ;  and,  when 
they  went  to  war,  it  was  not  merely  a  question  whether  the 
Hebrews  were  stronger  than  the  Philistines,  but  whether 
Jehovah  was  mightier  than  Dagon, —  for  the  gods  entered 
into  the  wars  with  the  same  earnestness  as  the  people. 

This  process  of  growth,  then,  went  on,  and  this  stage  was 
passed ;  and,  by  and  by,  it  dawned  upon  the  human  mind 
that  there  could  not  be  this  multiplicity  of  gods,  that  God 
must  be  one.  It  is  the  supreme  and  eternal  glory  of  the 
Hebrews  to  have  been  the  first  in  the  history  of  human 
thought  to  attain  this  grand  conception  of  monotheism. 
They  grew  to  believe  that  Jehovah  was  not  only  their  god, 
but  the  only  god  of  all  the  world.  The  prophets  declared 
this,  and  preached  it  until  they  made  it  a  common  thought 
in  the  minds  of  the  people  that  all  the  other  gods  of  the 
world  were  but  idols,  empty  names,  having  no  real  existence 
and  no  real  power,  to  whom  they  need  pay  no  worship,  of 
whom  they  need  stand  in  no  fear. 

It  was  a  peculiarity  of  this  Hebrew  thought,  unfortunately 
for  us,  as  I  think,  that  they  conceived  of  this  great  God 
Jehovah  as  a  God  outside  of  and  separate  from  nature,  not 
living  in  their  world,  but  set  apart  from  it, —  a  despot  ruling 
it  from  without,  having  created  it,  indeed ;  though,  by  some 
of  them,  even  that  was  questioned.  But  they  believed  that 
it  was  created  in  such  a  way  that  it  ran,  like  a  piece  of  mech- 
anism, by  itself;  while  he  stood  in  relation  to  it  chiefly 
through  miraculous  interference  to  bring  about  certain  re- 
sults that  would  not  be  produced  by  the  natural  working  of 
the  great  world-machine. 

It  is  a  peculiarity  of  Hindu  and  of  Greek  thought,  a  pecu- 
liarity quite  necessary  to  nature  worship,  to  believe  that 
the  gods  were  somehow  involved  and  implicated  in  the 
nature  of  things.  If  they  had  manifested  a  sufficient  grasp 


God  6 1 

of  the  world  to  have  developed  the  thought  of  the  unity  of 
things,  they  would  probably  have  come  much  nearer  to  our 
modern  conception  than  did  the  Hebrews.  They  believed 
in  nature  worship  in  a  thousand  forms ;  but  they  never  rose 
high  enough  to  grasp  the  conception  of  the  world's  unity. 
So  they  could  not  give  us  a  God  such  as  we  are  seeking 
to-day,  who  is  in  and  through  and  in  a  certain  sense  one 
with  nature,  its  soul  and  its  life. 

When  Christianity  came,  it  became  the  religion  of  the 
civilized  world ;  and  we  have  inherited  the  results  of  its 
thought  and  its  work.  But  Christianity  inherited  from  the 
parent  religion  the  belief  in  the  infallibility  of  the  Old 
Testament  scriptures ;  and,  along  with  it,  they  inherited  this 
conception  of  God  as  a  being  outside  of  nature,  apart  from  it, 
and  separated  so  far  from  it  that  he  was  utterly  unlike  any- 
thing that  we  could  naturally  know, —  that  we  must  know  him 
through  mediators  ;  that  we  could  reach  him  only  through 
miraculous  processes.  They  recognized  an  impassable  gulf 
that  only  miracle  could  bridge.  This  has  been  the  dominant 
conception  of  God,  taught  so  by  theology  in  all  ages  since ; 
but  we  are  rinding  it  impossible  to  believe  in  any  such  God 
as  that.  We  have  learned  to  think  of  nature  as  practically 
infinite.  We  cannot  conceive  any  bounds  or  limitations, 
and  we  are  recognizing  the  fact  that  to  think  of  two  infin- 
ities is  absurd.  If  nature  be  infinite,  then  there  is  no  place 
for  an  infinite  beyond  the  bound  of  nature.  Nature  has  no 
bounds.  We  are,  then,  face  to  face  with  this  dilemma :  that 
we  must  either  believe  in  nature  and  cease  believing  in  God 
or  else  we  must  believe  in  a  God  who  is  in  and  through 
nature,  its  life,  its  soul.  We  can  no  longer  believe  in  a  God 
who  rules  the  world  from  without  or  interferes  arbitrarily 
with  natural  processes.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  confusion 
of  thought  in  regard  to  this  matter.  I  remember  reading 


62  My  Creed 

some  years  ago  an  argument  in  favor  of  the  old  theory  of 
the  power  of  prayer ;  and  the  basis  of  it  was  that,  since  we 
can  manipulate  and  use  natural  laws  to  produce  results 
which  they  of  themselves  would  not  produce,  as  is  manifestly 
true,  we  must  presume  that  God  would  be  able,  also,  to 
manipulate  and  use  natural  laws  without  interfering  with 
them,  without  any  miraculous  break  in  their  method  or 
order.  It  is  true  that  we  can  thus  interfere  without  any 
breach  of  natural  laws.  We  simply  use  forces  in  accord- 
ance with  laws,  and  make  them  produce  results  which  they 
would  not  have  produced  but  for  our  interference.  If  we 
could  admit  the  existence  of  invisible  intelligences  or  spirits, 
it  would  be  possible  for  them  to  manipulate  natural  forces, 
and  produce  results  which  would  never  have  been  produced 
but  for  such  interference ;  and  this  would  be  no  more 
breach  of  natural  law  than  it  is  a  breach  of  such  law  to  lift 
a  book  or  chair  to  change  their  situation.  But  the  fallacy 
of  the  argument  lies  right  here ;  and  that  is  the  reason  why 
we  cannot  believe  in  a  God  separate  from  the  nature  of 
things.  The  nature  of  things  is  God.  The  forces  of  the 
universe  are  the  thoughts  of  God,  the  pulsing  of  his  life. 
What  we  call  laws  are  nothing  but  the  divine  habits  and 
methods  of  work.  For  God,  then,  to  interfere  with  them  is 
to  interfere  with  himself,  which  is  a  contradiction,  an  absur- 
dity. They  are  uniform  and  changeless,  for  the  simple 
reason  that,  if  there  be  infinite  wisdom,  infinite  power,  or 
infinite  love  at  work,  they  must  be  uniform  and  changeless. 
When  God  does  a  thing  he  does  it  the  right  way.  Under 
precisely  the  same  circumstances,  he  must  do  it  again  in 
precisely  the  same  way,  or  do  it  in  some  better  way,  which 
is  absurd.  It  is  out  of  this  conception  of  things  that  springs 
our  thought  of  the  uniformity  of  nature,  and  that  makes  that 
uniformity  necessary.  It  would  do  an  unspeakably  larger 


God  63 

amount  of  mischief  and  evil,  if  there  were  a  doubt  as  to 
the  absolute  uniformity  of  natural  law,  than  is  wrought  at  the 
present  time  by  men's  misconception  of  these  forces  through 
ignorance  of  them,  or  through  putting  themselves,  as  it  were, 
under  the  wheels  of  the  moving  forces  of  nature  and  being 
crushed  by  them.  However  great  the  amount  of  evil  and 
suffering  that  is  wrought  to-day,  it  would  be  infinitely  more 
if  we  could  not  count  on  the  uniformity  of  natural  forces. 

Occupying  this  stand-point  of  human  thought,  let  us  look 
about  us,  and  see  what  conceptions  of  this  infinite  power 
are  forced  upon  us  by  the  intelligent  study  of  things.  We  are 
encompassed  on  every  hand  by  a  power  that  to  us  is  infinite. 
The  old  psalm-writer  caught  a  marvellously  beautiful  and 
powerful  glimpse  of  that  idea  when  he  asked  whether  it  was 
possible  for  him  to  hide  from  God,  saying  that  the  night  and 
the  day  were  alike  to  him  ;  that,  if  he  ascended  into  heaven, 
he  would  not  escape  him,  for  he  is  there ;  if  he  descended 
into  the  abyss,  he  would  not  escape  him,  for  he  was  there 
also.  If  he  took  the  wings  of  the  morning  and  flew  to  the 
uttermost  parts  of  the  sea,  even  there  he  would  find  this  same 
power.  It  was  on  his  right  hand  and  on  his  left,  behind 
him,  before  him,  and  around  him.  It  is  this  power  of  which 
Paul  said,  "  In  him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being." 
There  is,  then,  all  around  us  this  infinite  power.  I  do  not 
ask  you  to  think  of  it  as  God  yet.  I  ask  you  to  take  no 
step  faster  than  that  which  I  indicate  as  I  advance  from 
point  to  point.  We  are  surrounded  by  this  infinite  power; 
and,  on  any  theory,  we  are  the  offspring  of  that  power.  It 
has  produced  us.  It  is  our  father  and  mother.  Out  of  it 
we  have  come,  such  as  we  are  and  whatever  we  are. 

One  step  farther.  It  is  often  said  that  the  first  and  most 
fundamental  idea  in  religion  is  the  sense  of  dependence.  If 
that  be  so,  then  here  is  eternal  basis  for  that ;  for  we  are 


64  My  Creed 

dependent  on  this  mighty  power  every  moment  of  our  lives. 
From  the  first  breath  we  draw  until  the  last,  we  are,  as  it 
were,  in  the  arms  of  this  power ;  and  all  the  good  of  life,  all 
its  joy,  all  its  peace,  all  its  hope,  all  that  we  are  and  all  that 
we  have,  is  the  product  of  this  power. 

One  step  more.  In  this  power  is  the  law  of  our  life. 
Whatever  good  we  have  attained  has  been  by  as  much  as  we 
have  understood  and  have  obeyed  this  power,  no  matter 
whether  we  have  done  it  ignorantly,  have  stumbled  into  it, 
or  have  done  it  as  the  result  of  deliberate  and  careful  study. 
All  the  good,  all  the  joy,  all  that  makes  life  worth  living,  has 
come  from  so  much  of  knowledge  and  obedience  to  this  in- 
finite power  as  we  have  been  able  to  gain.  This  power  is 
mystery.  We  shall  never  comprehend  it,  I  hope.  At  the 
same  time,  this  mystery  is  the  sun.  We  cannot  look  at  the 
sun  without  being  blinded ;  but  it  is  the  sun  that  gives  us  all 
the  light  we  have.  We  cannot  penetrate  this  infinite  mystery 
now ;  and  we  never  shall  penetrate  it,  unless  the  finite,  by 
being  piled  up,  can  reach  to  the  height  of  the  infinite. 
And  yet  this  eternal  mystery  is  the  light  of  all  our  seeing. 
It  makes  no  difference  where  we  turn,  where  we  begin  our 
inquiry,  we  find  ourselves  in  a  moment  face  to  face  with  this 
baffling,  alluring,  inscrutable  mystery. 

Suppose  we  examine  a  grass-blade.  We  talk  about  its 
color,  its  beauty.  We  ask  where  they  came  from,  what 
makes  this  mystery  of  its  life  and  growth;  and  some  one 
tells  me  about  the  seed  that  was  sown  in  the  soil,  and,  if 
he  be  specially  learned,  he  will  tell  us  about  the  qualities  of 
the  soil  and  moisture,  about  the  sunlight  and  its  chemical 
power,  and  how  by  the  working  of  all  these  there  comes 
the  product  in  this  grass-blade.  But  I  go  a  little  deeper. 
I  not  only  want  to  know  where  the  grass-blade  came  from, 
but  I  go  back  of  the  seed ;  and  I  ask  why  this  result  rather 


God  65 

than  some  other,  what  are  these  forces  of  nature  that  pro- 
duce this  special  result,  and  why  have  they  produced  it? 
And  a  few  questions  bring  me  to  the  brink  of  all  we  know ; 
and  there  I  am  on  the  outermost  verge  of  human  investiga- 
tion, face  to  face  with  the  infinite  mystery  and  the  infinite 
life. 

Or  suppose,  leaving  the  simple  fact  of  the  growth  of  this 
blade  of  grass,  I  turn  to  a  flower,  and  ask  where  the  beauty 
and  the  fragrance  of  the  flower  come  from.  Some  one 
gives  me  an  elaborate  chemical  explanation  that  does  teach 
me  much  as  to  the  process ;  but  I  press  the  question  deeper 
and  deeper,  further  and  further,  and  again  I  come  to  the 
verge  of  all  we  know,  and  face  the  inscrutable  mystery, — 
not  only  of  life  now,  but  of  fragrance  and  beauty  as  well. 

Leaving  these  little  things,  I  turn  my  glass  to  the  heavens, 
and  study  a  constellation  or  a  solar  system,  a  sun  sur- 
rounded by  its  group  of  planets,  they  followed  by  their 
attendant  moons.  And  I  ask  how  this  comes  to  be,  and  to 
be  what  it  is.  And  the  astronomer  learnedly  discourses  on 
the  processes  by  which  these  have  been  developed.  But  I 
am  led  back  to  the  same  line  of  thought,  and  I  ask  as  to 
its  origin ;  and  I  am  again  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
infinite  mystery.  And  so,  if  I  start  with  a  truth,  the  love 
of  truth  in  the  human  mind,  the  human  conscience,  the 
sense  of  justice,  and  raise  the  question  as  to  how  that  has 
originated,  the  moral  philosopher  will  discourse  to  me  about 
human  experience,  and  show  how  people  have  come  to  think 
of  each  other  as  other  selves ;  and  so  the  idea  of  justice  has 
been  born.  But  what  set  these  people  in  the  particular 
relations  out  of  which  this  sense  of  justice  has  sprung? 
Again,  no  matter  which  way  I  turn,  or  what  I  question,  or 
where  I  begin  my  investigations,  it  is  the  same.  Let  me 
take  this  web  of  the  universe,  so  marvellously  and  intricately 


66  My  Creed 

woven,  and  pick  up  one  tiny  thread  anywhere,  and  let  me 
follow  it  through  and  down  and  back,  and  trace  its  origin, 
try  to  find  out  how  it  has  been  twined  and  twisted  as  it  is ; 
and  I  am  led  to  the  infinite  mystery,  the  power,  the  wisdom, 
that  demands  to  be  thought  of  as  the  explanation,  but  which 
itself  is  forever  inexplicable. 

Now  take  this  another  way.  I  wish  you  to  get  the  im- 
pression of  what  I  distinctly  mean, —  that  I  am  not  playing 
with  the  imagination,  that  I  am  not  taking  one  single  step 
of  assumption,  that  I  am  not  forgetting  for  one  instant  the 
rigor  of  the  scientific  method  of  procedure.  Take  a  few 
axioms  which  are  the  very  basis  of  all  that  the  world  knows 
or  claims  to  know.  You  are  familiar  with  them  :  "  A  stream 
does  not  rise  higher  than  its  source,"  "  Nothing  comes  from 
nothing,"  "  Nothing  is  evolved  which  was  not  first  involved," 
"Every  effect  must  have  an  adequate  cause."  Let  us  lay 
these  down  as  a  platform  on  which  to  stand  for  a  little 
while.  These  are  the  very  foundation  and  basis  of  all  the 
world's  knowledge,  of  all  modern  science. 

Now,  let  us  look  at  a  few  things  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
exist,  that  have  come  from  somewhere,  and  that  demand  a 
cause  that  is  equal  to  them.  Note,  in  the  first  place,  this 
marvellous  fact  of  self-consciousness,  that  has  come  from 
somewhere.  It  demands  a  cause  adequate.  There  must  be, 
then,  in  this  infinite  power  that  closes  us  round,  not  neces- 
sarily a  counterpart,  an  exact  copy  of  my  personal  self-con- 
sciousness,—  do  not  think  that  I  am  absurd  enough  to  sup- 
pose that  God  is  in  my  image,  or  that  I  can  limit  him  by 
the  limits  of  my  own  personality, —  but  in  this  infinite  power 
and  life  there  must  be  something  adequate,  equal  to  self- 
consciousness,  something  that  is  as  much  as  that.  Scientists 
and  philosophers  tell  us  that  thought  is  developed  by  brain, 
and  that  we  cannot  conceive  of  there  being  any  thought 


God  67 

where  there  is  no  brain ;  and,  if  there  is  any  such  thing  as 
infinite  thought,  there  must  be  an  infinite  brain,  which  they 
declare  to  be  absurd.  But  here  is  thought ;  and,  in  this  in- 
finite life  out  of  which  we  with  our  thought  have  really  come, 
there  must  be  that  which  at  least  is  adequate  to  thought, 
which  is  equal  to  it,  which  is  as  much  as  thought.  There 
is  in  us  love,  tenderness,  pity.  Is  there  no  love,  tenderness, 
pity,  in  anything  that  we  may  call,  even  by  a  figure  of 
speech,  the  infinite  heart?  Love,  tenderness,  pity,  are 
facts.  They  are  products  of  the  infinite  life :  they  are 
births  from  that  father  and  mother  source  of  all  things. 
Then  it  follows  that  there  must  be  at  least  something  ade- 
quate, equal  to,  as  much  as  love,  tenderness,  pity.  There 
is  justice  in  the  world,  a  sense  of  justice  ever  growing,  deep- 
ening, broadening,  lifting.  There  must  then  be,  by  parity 
of  reasoning,  in  this  infinite  source  something  equal  to. 
adequate  to,  the  production  of  justice. 

Not  only  this.  All  these  things  which  make  up  the  glory 
of  humanity  have  been  growing,  age  after  age,  throughout  the 
whole  period  of  human  history.  The  power  which  produces 
these  things  is  a  power  like  that  which  we  saw  in  the  grass- 
blade,  in  the  corn, —  a  power  that  lifts  and  pushes  and  reaches 
forward  age  after  age.  If  I  go  into  a  cornfield  and  see  a 
stalk  of  corn  half-grown,  if  I  have  watched  it  day  after  day 
in  its  process  of  development,  have  seen  each  twenty-four 
hours  that  it  had  come  to  something  more  than  it  was  the 
day  before,  the  conviction  grows  on  me,  until  it  becomes 
irresistible,  that  the  power  that  produced  it,  and  made  it  come 
up  to  its  present  point,  is  not  exhausted ;  that  it  has  only 
partially  manifested  itself ;  that  it  is  adequate  to  the  comple- 
tion of  that  which  it  has  begun, —  and  how  much  more  ?  No 
one  knows.  This  power,  then,  out  of  which  we  have  come, 
has  produced  us  and  made  us  what  we  are  ;  and  it  is  ade- 


68  My  Creed 

quate  not  only  to  that  which  has  been  and  is,  but  to  carry- 
ing us  on  to  perfection.  God,  then,  this  infinite  power,  is  as 
much  as,  and  equal  to,  an  ideally  perfect  manhood.  So  much 
seems  to  me  simply  scientific,  common-sense  demonstration. 
I  must -point  out  to  you  here  a  fallacy,  which  weakens  this 
argument,  even  to  its  destruction,  in  the  eyes  of  many.  I 
listened  within  a  year  to  a  brilliant  speaker,  a  man  who  is 
looked  up  to  with  reverence  by  a  great  many  as  a  careful 
and  profound  thinker,  and  all  the  way  through  he  based  his 
argument  on  what  seems  to  me  this  shallow  fallacy  of  which 
I  am  about  to  speak.  He  said  that,  if  we  are  to  worship  any 
one,  then  we  must  worship  man  ;  that  men  are  the  only  ones 
that  have  ever  developed  anything  that  we  call  goodness. 
If  we  are  to  have  any  God,  that  he  must  at  least  be  good ;  for 
we  cannot  worship  power.  We  can  only  worship  the  moral 
ideal.  Therefore,  he  said,  we  can  find  an  object  to  worship 
only  within  the  range  of  human  life.  As  we  look  at  nature, 
he  said,  we  find  no  traces  of  feeling,  no  traces  of  goodness. 
Nature  is  hard,  pitiless,  cruel,  unfeeling.  Nature  would  as 
soon  crush  a  little  child  as  to  help  one  in  distress  :  nature  is 
utterly  indifferent  to  both.  Therefore,  he  said,  the  power 
which  is  manifested  in  nature,  God,  must  be  no  better  than 
his  manifestation, —  therefore  not  an  object  of  worship. 
This  is  a  childish,  pitiable  fallacy,  from  beginning  to  end. 
Is  nature  only  the  ocean  that  drowns  people,  or  the  volcano 
that  overthrows  a  town,  or .  the  earthquake  that  destroys 
human  property  and  life  ?  Is  it  only  the  marsh  that  de- 
velops disease  ?  Is  nature  only  the  lightning  that  smites  ? 
Is  nature  only  the  sun  that  warms  ?  Where  do  we  come  in  ? 
What  are  we  to  do  with  humanity  ?  This  seems  to  me  to  be 
playing  Hamlet  with  Hamlet  left  out  with  a  vengeance. 
Man  is  not  only  a  part  of  nature :  he  is  its  culmination,  its 
flower,  its  crown.  And,  as  we  say  of  a  man  he  must  be 


God  69 

judged  by  his  best,  so  let  us  say  of  nature.  Judged  by  its 
best,  the  best  that  nature  has  yet  produced,  is  a  man.  Man 
is  not  something  that  we  can  leave  out.  Man  is  not  only  a 
part  of  nature,  but  the  most  important  part  of  it ;  and  we 
must  take  him  into  account  if  we  are  to  talk  about  nature 
and  about  power  as  it  manifests  itself  in  and  through  nature. 
Let  us  remember,  then,  when  we  are  looking  after  God,  not 
to  go  down  into  the  very  beginnings,  the  ooze,  the  mud  and 
primal  slime,  and  think  that  there  is  all  there  is  of  it.  Let 
us  climb  up  into  the  intellectual  heights  of  a  Shakspere,  the 
spiritual  heights  of  a  Moses,  an  Isaiah,  a  Jesus ;  climb  up 
into  the  tenderness,  into  the  love,  the  pity,  the  justice,  the 
help,  the  sacrifice,  the  grandest  qualities  of  human  character 
and  life,  and  say,  This  is  what  nature  comes  to  in  its  highest 
development.  When  nature  writes  its  final  sentence,  it  is 
a  perfect,  ideal,  loving,  tender,  helpful  man.  That  is  what 
nature  means.  If  you  are  looking  after  God  in  and  through 
nature,  follow  it  to  its  ultimate,  not  stick  at  the  beginning. 

As  we,  then,  study  the  world,  including  man,  as  we  study 
the  universe  from  its  lowest  to  its  highest,  it  seems  to  me 
that  we  can  climb  through  nature  up  to  nature's  God.  What 
do  we  mean  by  God  ?  What  is  it  we  are  after  ?  We  have 
found  out  that  man  is  essentially,  necessarily,  a  religious 
being ;  and  God  we  think  of  as  the  source  and  the  ultimate 
aim  and  object  of  the  religious  life.  If  we  find,  then,  that 
this  infinite,  mysterious  power  is  fitted,  is  adequate  to,  equal 
to,  all  these  things  in  us  which  we  name  religious,  is  fitted  to 
match  them  and  inspire  them,  to  lift  them  to  the  ideal,  then 
have  we  not  found  an  adequate  source,  aim,  object,  for  the 
religious  life  ?  We  have  found  out  that  religion  implies  the 
thought  of  this  infinite  power  not  ourselves,  a  thought  of 
certain  relations  existing  between  ourselves  and  this  power ; 
and  we  know  that  better  relations  may  and  ought  to  exist. 


70  My  Creed 

and  the  object  of  religion  is  to  establish  this  better  relation 
day  by  day  and  year  after  year.  We  found,  near  the  close  of 
our  sermon  last  Sunday,  that  the  highest  manifestation  of 
religious  life  in  men  must  consist  of  three  things, —  true 
thought,  noble  feeling,  and  right  action.  A  man  who  thinks 
truly,  feels  nobly,  and  acts  rightly  is  the  ideal  man ;  and  re- 
ligion can  do  nothing  for  him  except  help  him  to  be  all  these. 
If,  then,  there  is  in  this  power  to  which  we  are  related  some- 
thing that  matches  this  thought  of  ours,  something  that 
matches  this  feeling  of  ours,  something  that  matches  this 
power  of  action,  something  that  provokes  thought,  that  in- 
spires and  improves  all  thoughts  and  lifts  them  to  their  high- 
est, what  more  do  we  want  of  a  God  than  that  ?  This  power 
is  the  only  truth,  of  which  all  our  little  truth  is  only  a  frag- 
ment. There  is  the  ideal.  This  power  manifesting  itself 
through  nature  and  man, —  this  is  the  infinite  emotion,  love, 
pity,  tenderness,  justice,  help,  of  which  I  have  spoken.  This 
power  is  the  ideal  of  all  right  action. 

As  we  stand,  then,  facing  this  inexplicable  mystery,  power, 
and  law  of  our  life,  we  find  infinite  truth ;  we  find  infinite 
tenderness,  love,  emotion  of  every  noble  kind ;  we  find  the 
ideal  for  all  right  action.  Here  is  something  to  be  rever- 
enced, to  be  worshipped,  something  to  be  loved,  something 
to  be  trusted,  something  to  take  as  our  standard  of  action, 
something  to  be  our  helper  in  becoming  ever  higher  and 
nobler  than  we  have  been  in  the  past.  We  shall  never  know 
this  power  completely,  because  it  is  infinite  and  we  are  finite. 
If  we  could  know  it,  it  would  be  the  end  of  all  perfection. 
Such  a  thing  as  infinite  advance  would  be  absurd.  Men 
may  be  trained  to  believe  in  certain  ideals  and  names.  They 
may  think  they  believe  no  longer  in  God,  but  it  will  only 
mean  that  they  believe  no  longer  in  this  man's  God  or  that 
man's  God.  They  must  believe  in  this  infinite  power  and 


God  71 

love.  No  man  can  name  it,  no  thought  can  comprehend  it ; 
and  yet  I  am  scientifically  warranted,  as  I  think,  in  saying, 
as  my  last  confession  on  this  subject, —  a  saying  in  which 
I  hope  you  will  all  reverentially,  tenderly,  devoutly  join, —  / 
believe  in  God. 


REVELATION. 


IN  the  second  sermon  of  this  series,  dealing  with  the  ques- 
tion, "  What  Light  have  we  to  guide  us  ? "  I  touched  briefly 
upon  some  views  held  concerning  the  Bible.  Those  who 
are  familiar  with  the  line  of  my  preaching  for  several  years 
past  will  know  that  I  have  touched  upon  some  one  phase 
or  another  of  this  subject  more  than  once,  and,  superficially 
listening,  might  suppose  that  I  had  forgotten  myself,  and 
this  morning  was  about  to  walk  unconsciously  over  the  same 
old  field.  But  the  purpose  I  have  in  view  is  quite  distinct 
from  any  that  I  have  treated  in  the  past,  and  the  scope 
of  what  I  say  will  be  somewhat  broader  than  any  previous 
treatment. 

This  question  of  revelation, —  as  to  whether  we  have  one, 
as  to  whether  it  is  definite  and  clear  enough  to  meet  our 
practical  needs, — all  this  is  constantly  recurring  and  coming 
up  over  and  over  again ;  and,  until  people  have  some  clear 
and  definite  thoughts  on  these  subjects, —  clearer  than  they 
already  possess,  judging  by  personal  conversation  and  letters 
that  are  constantly  coming  to  me, —  the  theme  will  need 
reiterated  treatment.  I  am  convinced,  at  any  rate,  that 
false  views  concerning  divine  revelation — mistaken,  narrow, 
bigoted  conceptions  as  to  what  it  means  —  stand  in  the  way 
not  only  of  political,  social,  and  scientific  progress,  but  in 
the  way  of  religious  progress,  more  than  any  other  one  thing. 

You  are  perfectly  well  aware  how,  for  the  last  thousand 


Revelation  73 

years,  almost  every  step  of  advance  that  the  race  has  taken, 
whether  in  science,  in  philosophy,  in  medicine,  in  sociology, 
in  politics,  in  any  department  of  life,  has  been  met  and 
opposed  by  a  text ;  and  this  text  has  been  supposed  to  settle 
the  matter  for  good  and  all.  The  people,  therefore,  who 
have  held  this  conception  of  the  divine  revelation  have  stood 
in  the  attitude  of  opposition  to  any  new  light  that  might 
come  from  Him  who  is  the  source  and  centre  of  all  illumina- 
tion ;  and,  their  minds  being  filled  with  these  false,  partial, 
narrow  ideas,  there  has  been  no  place  for  the  entry  of  any- 
thing broader  or  finer  or  higher.  Then  this  conception  of 
the  infallibility  of  a  book,  of  its  being  the  one  only  complete 
revelation  from  God  to  man,  cultivates  the  spirit  of  antag- 
onism to  one's  fellows ;  cultivates  a  spirit  of  pride,  as  though 
we  who  have  this  were  the  favorites  to  whom  God  had 
spoken.  It  cultivates  a  spirit  of  bitterness  and  opposition 
to  those  who  would  accept  any  larger,  deeper,  higher,  grander 
theory  of  the  Word  of  God.  I  was  conversing  with  a  friend 
in  one  of  our  larger  cities  only  a  few  days  ago ;  and  he  told 
me  that,  for  having  been  instrumental  in  having  a  lecture 
given  in  that  city,  in  which  some  of  these  larger,  grander 
ideas  were  set  forth,  he  had  found  that  many  an  old  friend, 
who  had  been  cordial  and  kindly  to  him  for  years,  was  ready 
now  to  turn  upon  him  the  cold  shoulder  —  for  no  other 
reason  but  this. 

Then  this  acceptance  of  the  Bible  as  the  one  infallible 
Word  of  God,  besides  cultivating  this  spirit  of  exclusiveness, 
making  those  who  hold  it  feel  that  they  are  favorites  of  God, 
and  that  all  others  are  outside  of  the  circle  of  that  favor, 
tends  to  create  a  spirit  of  hypocrisy,  of  double  dealing,  of 
covering  up  of  real  opinions  which  may  be  held  on  the  part 
of  those  who  are  ready  in  private  to  accept  other  light 
from  some  other  source.  This  view  is  held  by  all  the  old 


74  My  Creed 

churches.  The  churches  are  planted  upon  this  as  their  foun- 
dation. These  views  are  wrought  into  the  very  fibre  of 
society,  so  that  social  relations  are  more  or  less  built  upon 
them.  Men  and  women  attend  this  church  or  that  for  social 
reasons,  for  business  reasons,  for  the  sake  of  the  station  they 
may  have,  for  the  sake  of  entering  into  certain  relations  with 
their  fellow-men.  But  there  are  thousands,  as  is  well  known 
to-day,  who  are  convinced  that  there  is  a  wider,  larger,  finer 
truth  abroad,  who  studiously  conceal  their  convictions  or 
only  whisper  them  to  a  friend  or  neighbor  under  their  breath. 

I  received  a  letter  within  a  day  or  two  from  a  gentleman 
at  the  South,  whom  I  never  met ;  and  he  tells  me,  what  we 
all  know  in  so  many  directions,  that  he  is  ostracized  for  his 
opinions,  and  that  he  knows  gentlemen  who  share  the  same, 
who  tell  him  that  they  cannot  afford  to  confess  them.  The 
same  gentleman,  to  whom  I  first  referred,  in  a  neighboring 
city',  told  me  frankly  that,  if  his  business  was  such  that  he 
were  dependent  upon  the  patronage  of  the  public,  he  could 
not  afford  his  convictions. 

These  views,  then,  of  the  exclusiveness  of  the  revelation 
of  God  as  contained  within  a  certain  book,  do  work  practical 
evil.  They  do  stand  in  the  way  of  the  progress  of  mankind. 
They  do  cultivate  feelings  of  bitterness.  They  do  tend  to 
develop  hypocrisy  and  the  covering  up  of  one's  real  opinions. 
They  do  stand  in  the  way  of  the  higher  development  of  men ; 
and  they  do  lead  practically  to  the  breaking  down  of  the 
moral  fibre  of  the  mind.  There  are  thousands  of  persons 
who  have  been  taught,  as  most  of  us  have,  that  the  one  great 
reason  for  conduct  was  the  supposed  infallible  law  contained 
in  a  supposed  infallible  book ;  that  there  was  no  moral  law, 
no  basis  for  religious  life,  outside  this  book. 

What  is  the  effect  of  this  ?  Why,  people  who  appreciate 
the  value  of  religion  and  morality  will  fight  against  any 


Revelation  75 

larger  light  for  the  sake  of  this,  even  in  the  face  of  the  half- 
conviction  as  to  the  unsoundness  of  their  position ;  for  they 
say,  If  it  be  indeed  true  that  the  Bible  is  the  basis  of  these 
grand  elements  of  human  life,  then  we  must  hold  it  at  all 
hazards,  in  spite  of  all  things  that  can  be  brought  against  it. 
And  I  have  had  it  said  to  me,  over  and  over  again,  "  If  you 
will  bring  to  me  a  better  book,  against  which  fewer  objec- 
tions can  be  urged,  we  will  take  it," —  as  though  it  must  be 
some  book  and  one  unquestionably  without  error. 

Again,  there  is  that  feeling  growing  out  of  this  on  the  part 
of  liberals.  I  see  it,  I  recognize  it,  I  deplore  it  every  week 
of  my  life.  Having  been  taught  that  the  Bible  was  the 
infallible  revelation  of  God,  and  having  become  convinced 
that  it  was  not,  what  is  the  natural  course  for  the  liberal 
man  to  take  ?  I  hear  it  said,  every  little  while,  that  the 
Bible  is  not  any  better  than  any  other  book.  People  say, 
"  We  do  not  read  it :  we  do  not  teach  our  children  to  read 
it."  They  seem  to  feel  that,  if  it  is  not  an  infallible  book, 
then  it  is  of  no  value  whatever.  Strange,  curious  logic! 
Parallel  to  this,  on  the  other  hand,  are  those  who  say  that 
we  must  accept  the  whole  of  the  Bible  or  nothing.  What 
would  you  think  of  the  miner  who  should  decline  to  work  a 
vein  of  gold  because  the  entire  mountain  in  which  it  was 
found  was  not  solid  ore  ?  You  would  smile  at  a  folly  like 
this  in  any  other  direction.  But  there  are  thousands  of 
liberals  in  Europe  and  America  who  are  not  ashamed  to  be 
grossly  ignorant  of  the  one  book  which  has  played  a  larger 
part  in  the  history  of  the  world  than  any  other.  No  matter 
what  may  be  the  ultimate  position  we  shall  take  regarding 
it,  we  cannot  understand  our  political  history,  our  social  con- 
dition, without  reference  to  the  Bible.  Our  literature  is 
interwoven  with  it  from  first  to  last.  We  cannot  go  to 
Europe  and  visit  the  picture  galleries  intelligently,  without 


76  My  Creed 

a  knowledge  of  the  Bible ;  and  then,  whatever  theories  you 
choose  to  hold  concerning  it,  it  is  the  grandest  of  all  relig- 
ious literature  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  All  that  is  true 
in  it,  all  that  is  grand,  all  that  is  inspiring,  all  that  is  help- 
ful, all  that  is  food  for  our  moral  and  spiritual  nature, —  all 
these  remain,  whatever  theory  you  may  hold  as  to  its  ori- 
gin or  the  position  which  it  ought  to  take  as  beside  the  other 
great  books  of  the  world. 

So  much,  then,  by  way  of  preface  and  of  reason  for  treat- 
ing once  more  this  great  subject  of  divine  revelation.  I 
propose  to  go  over  the  ground  as  briefly  and  clearly  as 
I  can,  and  tell  you  whether  I  think  there  is  a  divine  reve- 
lation, and,  if  so,  where  it  is  to  be  found  and  what  is  its 
nature. 

The  old  theologians  almost  always  began,  after  assuming 
their  own  belief  in  God  for  the  purpose,  by  saying  that  this 
God,  our  Father,  caring  for  his  children,  would  naturally 
make  a  revelation  of  his  purpose  and  his  will  toward  them. 
He  would  tell  them  what  sort  of  a  being  he  is.  He  would 
let  them  know  something  about  themselves  and  of  what  they 
ought  to  do.  He  would  throw  some  light  upon  their  earthly 
pathway.  Then,  after  announcing  this  as  probably  true, 
these  same  old  theologians  proceed  to  take  the  Bible  as 
being  the  one  book  that  we  can  rationally  regard  as  contain- 
ing such  a  revelation  as  this,  and  argue  that,  in  this,  we 
possess  that  which  we  supposed  God  would  be  likely  to  give 
to  his  children ;  and,  of  course,  in  the  process  of  proving 
that  this  is  a  divine  revelation,  they  will  naturally  minimize 
the  errors  and  difficulties,  and  end  by  telling  us  that  here  we 
have  a  complete,  final,  perfect  revelation  of  God  to  man. 

Let  us  look  at  the  Bible  for  a  few  minutes.  I  cannot  go 
into  detail  for  lack  of  time ;  neither  is  it  needful,  after  the 
many  things  that  can  be  found  on  this  subject  in  other 


Revelation  77 

sermons,  books,  and  treatises  by  the  score.  Let  us  review 
the  reasons  why  we  cannot  accept  this  as  being  the  infalli- 
ble and  complete  revelation  of  God. 

Suppose  we  take  the  Bible  in  our  hands,  and  look  at  it. 
What  have  we  ?  Sixty-six  small  treatises  bound  in  one  vol- 
ume. We  have  here  history,  law,  prophecy,  proverbs, 
poetry,  biography,  epistles,  and  all  varieties  of  literature, 
bound  up  in  one  volume. 

When  were  these  books  written  ?  They  were  written  at 
different  times,  covering  a  period,  speaking  roughly,  of  a 
thousand  years.  Who  wrote  them  ?  We  do  not  know, 
except  in  a  few  cases.  When  were  they  written  ?  Defi- 
nitely and  precisely,  we  do  not  know,  perhaps,  in  the  case 
of  a  single  one  of  them.  Where  were  they  written  ?  In  the 
main,  we  do  not  know.  We  know  in  what  country  most  of 
them  were  written,  not  in  what  town  or  by  what  hand. 
Concerning  these  matters,  we  are  ignorant.  It  seems  a  little 
strange  that  we  should  know  so  little  about  so  wonderful  a 
book. 

Do  these  sixty-six  books  agree  with  each  other  ?  Do  they 
all  tell  the  same  story  ?  Are  they  at  one  in  their  accounts 
of  events  and  in  their  enunciation  of  principles  ?  No. 
They  contradict  each  other  in  the  most  glaring  way,  and  are 
simply  irreconcilable,  as  every  one  knows  who  has  no  object 
in  making  the  contrary  appear. 

What  is,  then,  the  nature  of  the  authority  which  this 
book  possesses  ?  What  do  we  go  to  it  for  ?  You  are  aware 
that  the  world  used  to  go  to  the  Bible  for  everything.  Let 
us  note  a  few  of  the  things  that  we  do  not  even  claim 
that  we  go  to  it  for  to-day ;  and  mark  this  one  thing :  even 
those  who  assert  its  infallibility  still  have  ceased  to  use  it 
as  practically  an  authority  concerning  almost  all  of  these 
things. 


78  My  Creed 

No  one  thinks  of  going  to  the  Bible  to-day  for  his  science, 
for  his  conceptions  of  the  universe,  for  his  knowledge  as  to 
how  and  when  the  worlds  came  into  being.  No  one  thinks 
of  going  to  it  for  astronomy.  No  one  thinks  of  accepting 
its  story  in  regard  to  the  relation  to  the  earth  of  the  other 
heavenly  bodies.  Again,  no  one  thinks  of  taking  the  Bible 
as  ultimate  authority  in  history.  It  tells,  indeed,  its  story 
of  the  origin  of  nations;  but  it  is  not  the  story  which 
the  intelligent  world  to-day  believes.  It  tells  its  story  in 
regard  to  the  origin  of  languages ;  but  the  account  that  it 
gives  the  world  recognizes  as  only  the  childish  tradition  of 
the  childhood  world.  No  one  thinks  of  taking  the  Bible  as 
authority  in  political  economy.  Even  the  principles  of  polit- 
ical economy  which  Jesus  himself  enunciated  there  is  not 
a  single  political  economist  in  the  Church  to-day,  or  out  of 
it,  who  would  advocate  as  generally  practical.  No  one  thinks 
of  going  to  the  Bible  as  ultimate  authority  in  medicine,  in 
regard  to  the  nature,  origin,  and  cure  of  disease.  The 
New  Testament  gives  specific,  definite,  apparently  authori- 
tative directions  as  to  what  shall  be  done  in  case  of  the 
illness  of  Christians.  There  is  not  a  Christian  on  earth 
to-day  who  thinks  of  carrying  out  these  directions  or  making 
them  practical.  Then  in  regard  to  the  ethics  of  the  Bible, — 
are  they  regarded  still  as  final,  finished,  complete  ?  The 
ethical  teaching  of  the  early  part  of  the  Bible  is  regarded 
as  belonging  to  and  naturally  springing  out  of  a  barbaric 
age,  part  of  it  long  ago  outgrown.  Even  the  ethical  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  are  not  all  accepted  by  the  civilized  world 
to-day.  They  are  quietly  laid  by.  No  one  says  in  open 
terms  that  they  are  rejected ;  but,  practically,  they  are  not 
regarded  as  authority.  They  are  not  included  in  treatises 
on  ethics.  No  one  tries  to  live  them  out;  and,  if  we  did 
try,  some  of  us  believe  that  the  progress  of  society  would  be 


Revelation  79 

hindered  rather  than  helped.  So  in  regard  to  all  these  great 
questions.  The  Bible  is  no  longer  regarded,  even  by  Chris- 
tians, as  practically  infallible.  The  churches  to-day  feel  the 
influence  of  the  spirit  of  the  modern  world,  recognize  the 
general  precepts  and  laws  of  society,  and  are  governed  by 
them.  But,  while  they  in  their  pulpits  and  in  their  churches 
confess  the  infallibility  of  the  Bible  as  complete  in  every 
part,  they  quietly  ignore  so  much  of  it  as  does  not  square 
with  the  spirit  and  progress  of  the  modern  world.  One  or 
two  other  results  must  be  noted.  If  we  should  accept  the 
Bible  as  infallible,  as  the  one  revelation  of  God  to  man,  we 
should  have  to  apologize  all  the  time  for  God.  We  should 
have  to  apologize  for  apparent  errors,  for  mistakes  in  science, 
in  history,  in  political  economy,  in  medicine.  We  should 
have  to  apologize  for  his  character  as  being  partial  and 
imperfect.  If  that  be  the  only  revelation  of  God  to  man, 
then  it  follows  that  either  he  does  not  wish  to  reveal  himself 
to  the  most  of  his  children  or  that  he  has  tried,  and  has  not 
succeeded.  This  book  began  to  be  written  in  fragments, 
probably  three  thousand  years  ago.  How  much,  how  large  a 
part,  of  the  world  to-day  is  familiar  with  it?  Does  God  want 
the  world  to  be  familiar  with  it  ?  If  he  does,  is  he  not  able 
to  execute  his  will  ?  If  he  does  not,  then  does  he  love  all  of 
his  children  or  love  only  a  few  ?  This  book,  according  to 
the  popular  interpretation  of  it,  teaches  that  only  those  who 
know  about  it  and  accept  it  and  live  it  are  going  to  be  saved. 
Does  God  wish  that  they  should  be  saved,  or  does  he  wish 
that  they  should  be  lost?  If  he  does  wish  that  they  shall 
be  saved,  are  there  not  resources  in  omnipotent  power  by 
means  of  which  he  could  spread  this  book  over  all  the  world, 
and  make  its  light  so  clear  that  all  men  would  be  compelled 
to  see  ? 
These,  then,  are  some  of  the  things  in  the  way  of  accept- 


8o  My  Creed 

ing  the  Bible  as  the  sole  revelation  of  God ;  but,  mark  you, 
this  does  not  at  all  mean  that  it  may  not  contain  fragments, 
magnificent  fragments,  of  what  is  real  divine  revelation.  For 
all  the  truth  in  it,  all  the  humanity  in  it,  all  the  tenderness, 
all  the  aspiration,  all  the  beauty,  all  the  fine  ethical  princi- 
ples, all  the  religious  inspiration,  all  these  things  that  are 
still  vital,  thrilling,  throbbing  with  life,  that  are  capable  of 
helping  and  lifting  men, —  these  are  from  the  one  source, 
and  in  my  view  are  a  part  of  divine  revelation. 

Leaving  that,  let  us  come  to  the  wider  theme.  I  told  you 
the  process  by  which  the  old  theologians  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  argue.  Believing  in  God,  they  believed  that  it 
would  be  natural  for  him  to  reveal  himself  to  men.  I  be- 
lieve in  God  with  my  whole  soul.  I  believe  quite  as  much 
as  the  old  theologians  did  that  it  is  natural  for  us  to  expect 
God  to  reveal  himself  to  his  children.  I  believe  just  as 
much  as  they  did  that  he  has  revealed  himself  to  his  chil- 
dren. Let  us  now  turn  for  a  little,  and  see  if  we  can  find 
where  this  revelation  is,  and  what  are  some  of  the  princi- 
pal truths  that  have  been  revealed. 

We  talk  about  God  as  unseen  and  unknown  and  un- 
knowable. Perhaps,  in  one  sense,  this  is  true.  We  shall 
never  know  him  completely,  because  the  finite  cannot  grasp 
the  infinite ;  and  yet  all  we  do  know  is  just  so  much  knowl- 
edge of  God.  A  parallel  thing  or  almost  parallel,  quite  near 
enough  for  our  purpose,  is  true  in  regard  to  man.  There 
is  not  a  single  man  on  earth  who  is  completely  known  by 
other  men.  Essential  man  is  as  invisible  as  God,  as  un- 
knowable as  God,  as  unfathomable  as  God.  What  do  you 
know  about  your  dearest  friend?  You  know  the  general 
contour  of  the  body;  you  know  the  height,  shape,  color  of 
hair,  expression  of  face ;  you  know  his  general  attitude,  his 
methods  or  movements,  the  dress  he  wears,  the  tone  of  his 


Revelation  81 

voice,  the  kind  of  words  to  which  he  gives  utterance.  You 
know  the  principles  which  underlie  his  character ;  you  know 
all  that  which  is  manifested  externally,  as  a  part  of  the  out- 
come of  that  which  is  never  completely  expressed.  That  is 
all  you  know  about  any  man ;  and  you  know  as  much  about 
God ;  for  all  that  is  is  God's  word,  his  utterance,  the  out- 
shining, the  manifestation  of  the  divine. 

Let  us  look  then,  for  a  moment,  at  this  magnificent  uni- 
verse outside  of  humanity.  Here  is  one  volume  of  that 
great  book  which  constitutes  the  ever-growing  revelation 
of  God.  What  do  we  discover  in  the  way  of  revelation,  as 
we  look  at  nature  outside  of  man?  We  find,  first,  the  reve- 
lation of  the  fact  of  eternal  life,  of  eternal  spirit  and  power. 
The  leaves  come  out  in  the  spring,  and  the  leaves  fall  in  the 
autumn.  Constellations,  like  leaves,  blossom,  or  unfold  in 
the  sky,  grow  old  and  fall.  All  things  that  are  visible  change 
and  pass  away;  but,  in  the  midst  of  all  these  changes, 
there  is  eternal  demonstration  of  the  one  life,  one  power, 
of  which  these  are  local  and  temporary  manifestations,  but 
which  itself  is  eternal  and  unchanging.  Modern  science 
tells  us  that  there  is  no  one  fact  demonstrated  with  such 
unquestioned  certainty  as  the  fact  of  the  existence  of  this 
one  eternal,  unchanging  life  and  power. 

Now,  let  us  see  if  we  can  get  at  some  of  the  qualities  of 
this  life  and  power.  It  manifests  itself  first  as  being  what 
we  have  just  called  it, —  power,  almighty  power  from  our 
stand-point,  unmeasured  and  to  us  unmeasurable,  which  is 
as  near  omnipotence  as  we  can,  or  need,  to  go.  Next,  it 
manifests  itself  as  eternal  law  and  order,  matching  the  keen- 
est and  finest  thought  and  insight  of  man.  Everywhere,  we 
see  perfect,  perfect,  perfect  order ;  and,  if  there  is  anywhere 
apparent  confusion,  anything  that  we  cannot  understand  and 
reason  through,  we  know  it  is  the  fault  of  our  limitations,  and 


82  My  Creed 

not  a  lack  of  law  or  order  or  intelligence.  Then  there  is 
the  manifestation  of  progress,  development,  growth,  of  ten- 
dency toward  an  end.  I  say  it  without  any  fear  of  being 
successfully  disputed  by  the  scientists :  there  is  the  mani- 
festation of  what  we  must  regard  as  purpose,  plan.  If  there 
is  anything  certain  from  the  beginning  of  this  world  until 
now,  it  is  the  uplifting  and  onreaching  of  the  power  at  work 
toward  certain  definite  ends.  But  we  have  no  other  name 
for  a  process  like  this,  except  plan  or  purpose.  So  much, 
then,  we  can  read  of  the  revelation  of  God  in  the  universe 
outside  of  man. 

When  we  come,  as  we  must,  to  include  humanity  in  this 
grand  word,  this  outshining,  this  manifestation,  this  reve- 
lation of  God,  then  how  dear  that  word  begins  to  grow  to 
us;  for  here  we  find  righteousness,  goodness,  love,  pity, 
readiness  to  suffer  for  others  and  to  help.  All  these  grand 
moral  qualities,  these  spiritual  aspirations,  these  glimpses  of 
the  ideal,  all  that  is  finest  and  sweetest  in  human  nature 
and  human  life,  are  a  part  of  the  word  of  God.  These 
are  God  speaking. 

Take  an  illustration  of  what  I  mean.  Visit  a  battle-field, 
and,  amid  all  the  horrors  of  carnage,  see  some  act  of  heroic 
devotion  to  principle  or  heroic  sacrifice  for  the  sake  of  a 
friend.  See  a  man  standing  and  holding  his  flag  when  he 
knows  it  means  death,  and  when  he  might  be  safe  and  happy 
in  flight  and  disgrace.  Could  he  ?  His  body  might  be  safe, 
animal  happiness  might  be  secured ;  but  that  which  he  feels 
and  knows  to  be  manliness  would  not  be  safe  nor  happy. 
Safer  and  happier  in  the  face  of  death  itself,  he  feels,  is  that 
which  he  regards  as  his  manhood.  And  so  he  stands  and 
dies.  There  is  a  word  of  God  uttered  through  the  life  of 
this  man.  It  is  an  illustration  of  that  which  is  eternal,  which 
is  in  the  infinite  and  eternal  life,  Else,  whence  came  it  ? 


Revelation  83 

How  did  it  manifest  itself  amid  the  smoke  and  confusion 
of  the  battle-field  ? 

Visit  some  sick-chamber.  A  child  is  ill  with  some  infec- 
tious disease ;  but  the  mother  does  not  desert  the  child,  even 
though  she  knows  that  every  breath  she  draws  she  is  taking 
the  risk  of  breathing  in  the  fatal  germ  which  may  end  her 
own  life.  Day  and  night,  in  sleeplessness  and  weariness, 
she  watches.  What  does  this  mean  ?  It  means  one  great 
illustration  of  what  is  possible  in  the  way  of  finding  the 
hi^h,  beautiful,  in  human  character  and  human  life.  It 

O       7  * 

means  one  little  glint,  a  broken  ray,  shining  out  from  that 
infinite  source  in  which  all  these  things  find  their  begin- 
ning and  their  completion.  Stand  beside  the  martyr  at  the 
stake,  and  read  another  word  of  God.  Stand  with  the  busi- 
ness man,  in  his  integrity  losing  all  and  seeing  his  fortune 
shattered  and  falling  to  pieces  around  him  rather  than  be 
dishonest,  and  read  another  word  of  God.  Wherever  you 
find  anything  high  or  fine  or  true  in  human  nature  and 
human  life,  there  you  are  reading  a  word,  a  sentence,  a 
chapter,  of  the  revelation  of  the  divine. 

All  these  things,  then,  that  are  true  and  fine  and  sweet 
in  human  nature,  as  well  as  that  which  is  magnificent  and 
grand  and  awful  in  the  universe  about  men,  are  sentences 
of  this  word  of  God  that  has  never  been  bound,  because  it 
is  not  yet  complete. 

Where,  then,  is  this  word  of  God  ?  Where,  then,  is  divine 
revelation?  Where  is  it  not?  Every  sermon  that  is  preached, 
every  hymn  that  is  sung,  every  prayer  that  is  offered,  every 
aspiration  of  the  human  heart,  everything  that  is  true,  every- 
thing that  is  beautiful,  everything  that  is  good,  is  a  part  of  it. 
And  the  evil, —  I  do  not  forget  this  objection, —  the  evil,  the 
pain,  the  sin,  the  suffering,  the  heart-ache,  the  crime, —  are 
these  also  manifestations  of  God  ?  Nay,  these  are  not  nor- 


84  My  Creed 

mal.  These  are  not  real,  in  the  sense  that  the  positive  and 
the  good  are  real.  These  are  not  in  the  nature  of  things. 
They  are  only  the  results  of  the  violation  of  the  nature  of 
things.  They  are  the  result  of  the  broken  lights,  the  cross- 
purposes,  the  ignorance,  the  passions,  of  humanity.  When 
we  have  grown  to  read  the  word  of  God  in  its  clearness  and 
fulness,  to  see  it  as  it  is  in  its  perfection,  then  these  things, 
like  shadows,  will  have  flown  away.  The  evil  will  not  re- 
main ;  for  it  is  no  part  of  the  permanent  universe  of  God : 
it  is  something  being  perpetually  corrected  and  outgrown. 

Is  this  revelation  to  be  a  substitute  for  the  Bible  ?  It  is 
curious  how  people  reason.  I  remember  some  years  ago, 
when  I  was  delivering  my  course  of  sermons  on  "  The 
Morals  of  Evolution,"  I  received  a  letter  from  my  old  minis- 
ter, the  one  whom  I  used  to  hear  preach  when  I  was  a  boy; 
and  he  said :  "  I  am  watching  with  a  good  deal  of  curiosity 
to  see  what  you  will  give  us  as  a  substitute  for  Christianity. 
When  you  have  left  out  all  the  teaching  of  Christ,  I  am 
interested  to  see  what  you  are  going  to  put  in  the  place  of 
it."  I  smiled  when  I  read  that  letter,  and  then  wrote  him 
that  I  had  no  idea  of  leaving  out  the  teaching  of  Christ  or 
the  ethics  of  Christianity.  I  would  not  offer  a  substitute  for 
those,  as  if  one  must  say,  Take  this  or  this.  It  is,  Take  them 
both,  take  them  all.  It  is  not  a  choice  with  us  between  the 
complete,  perfect,  world-wide  revelation  of  God  and  the 
Bible.  This  complete,  age-long,  perfect,  world-wide  revela- 
tion of  God  includes  the  Bible,  all  that  is  in  it  of  fine  or 
sweet  or  helpful.  It  only  sets  us  free  to  discard  and  lay 
one  side  whatever  in  the  Bible  is  not  helpful  and  healthful 
to  our  moral  and  spiritual  growth.  This  revelation  of  God, 
then,  includes  all  truth  in  all  ages,  in  all  nations,  in  all  relig- 
ions, in  all  literatures,  in  all  science,  in  all  art,  in  all  Bibles, 
in  all  hymns,  in  all  churches,  in  all  prayers.  All  things  are 


Revelation  85 

ours ;  and  all  that  is  truth  and  inspiration  is  a  part  of  the 
liberal's  grand  heritage. 

I  have  brought  out  in  these  sermons,  once  or  twice,  a  point 
of  so  much  importance  that  I  propose  to  keep  it  before  you 
as  a  key-note.  I  have  said  that  the  essential  things  in  relig- 
ion are  right  thinking,  right  feeling,  right  action.  The  prin- 
cipal things  concerning  which  we  need  revelation,  then,  are 
concerning  right  thought,  right  feeling,  right  action.  We 
need  to  find  truth,  so  that  our  thoughts  about  things  shall  be 
correct.  We  need  to  be  moved  by  right  impulses,  because, 
ultimately,  all  action  springs  out  of  feeling.  Action  does 
not  spring  out  of  thought.  A  man  may  think  and  think 
and  think  forever ;  but,  unless  he  also  feels,  he  would  never 
speak  or  act.  Feeling,  impulse,  emotion,  lead  to  deeds. 
So  noble  feeling  is  something  concerning  which  we  need 
guidance,  and  out  of  this  will  necessarily  spring  right  action. 

Have  we,  then,  an  infallible  revelation  ?  We  have  one  that 
is  infallible  enough  for  all  our  needs.  Indeed,  it  is  the  only 
infallible  revelation.  Truth,  in  so  far  as  it  is  made  clear  to 
us,  and  is  confirmed  by  study,  verified  by  experiment,  over 
and  over  again,  becomes  a  part  of  the  changeless  and  un- 
changeable word  of  God.  This  revelation  of  ours  needs  no 
apology  on  our  part.  We  do  not  have  to  explain  human 
errors,  human  blunders.  We  do  not  have  to  apologize  for 
barbaric  morality,  for  crude,  childish  ways  of  looking  at 
things.  These  are  perfectly  natural  in  their  age,  and  are, 
one  by  one,  outgrown  and  left  behind.  This  revelation, 
again,  is  not  a  partial  one,  given  to  one  little  people.  It  is 
world-wide  in  its  sweep,  given  to  all  men  as  fast  and  as  far  as 
they  are  capable  of  receiving  and  comprehending  it.  This 
revelation  is  a  growing  one,  perfect  enough  for  our  purpose 
to-day,  but  constantly  unfolding  as  the  brain  develops,  as 
the  social,  political  life  enlarges, —  adapting  itself  ever  to  the 
growing  needs  of  humanity. 


86  My  Creed 

I  believe,  then,  not  only  in  God,  but  that  he  has  spoken 
to  men,  telling  them  what  they  ought  to  know.  I  believe 
that  he  is  speaking  to  us  to-day,  and  that  we  need  to  listen 
with  consecrated  ears  and  reverent  hearts.  I  believe  that 
there  are  words  still  unspoken  that  we  shall  hear  to-morrow 
morning,—  new  watch-words,  grander  utterances,  that  will  be 
music  and  inspiration  in  the  hearts  of  the  peoples  of  the 
coming  time.  And  so  the  loving  God  speaks  to  and  leads 
on  his  living,  loving  children  age  after  age  forever. 


IS  THIS  A  GOOD  WORLD? 


THIS  is,  logically,  the  next  great  question  in  the  series  of 
sermons  on  My  Creed.  One  may  find  his  way  out  of  the  old 
theory  of  the  universe  and  into  the  new  one  ;  he  may  settle 
it  in  his  own  mind  as  to  what  light  there  is  to  guide  him  in 
his  new  world ;  he  may  hold  the  belief  that  religion  is  some- 
thing permanent  in  its  relations  to  human  life ;  he  may  be- 
lieve in  God,  or  a  Supreme  Power  that  controls  all  things ; 
he  may  accept  some  theory  of  revelation, —  the  unfolding 
of  the  life,  the  thought,  the  purpose  of  this  Power, —  and  still 
the  old  question  may  remain,  whether,  on  the  whole  and  in 
the  long  run,  the  world  is  good,  whether  life  is  worth  while, 
whether  all  the  troubles  and  burdens  and  sorrows  do  not 
more  than  overbalance  the  satisfactions. 

If  we  go  far  enough  back  in  the  history  of  human  thought, 
we  come  to  a  time  when  this  was  hardly  a  practical  question. 
People  believed  in  "gods  many  and  lords  many,"  some  of 
them  good  and  some  of  them  bad,  and  some  of  them  good 
and  bad  together;  and  they  indiscriminately  worshipped 
these  powers,  attempting  to  express  their  gratitude  for  favors 
or  to  propitiate  their  wrath.  It  never  occurred  to  them  in 
those  early  days  to  raise  this  great  moral  question,  whether 
these  supreme  powers  did  right  or  were  under  any  obliga- 
tion to  do  right.  When  people  were  members  of  a  tribe 
ruled  by  a  despotic  chief,  who  did  whatever  he  pleased  with- 
out any  question  on  the  part  of  his  subjects,  and  against 


88  My  Creed 

whom  on  any  such  ground  as  this  it  never  occurred  to  any 
one  to  rebel,  it  is  not  strange  that  they  should  raise  no 
very  nice  questions  as  to  the  righteous  authority  of  their 
gods.  Submitting  to  a  human  despot,  it  did  not  occur  to 
them  to  rebel  against  a  divine  one.  But,  in  the  progress  of 
human  thought  and  the  development  of  human  life,  there 
came  a  time  when  the  old  Hebrew  prophet  raised  the  ques- 
tion, Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  do  right  ? 

Do  you  see  the  significance  of  that  question  ?  Once  admit 
the  right  of  asking  it,  and  the  thought  that  "might  makes 
right "  is  forever  antiquated.  For,  if  might  makes  right,  if 
God  has  the  right  to  do  simply  as  he  pleases,  then  there  is 
no  significance,  no  relevance,  in  asking  the  question  whether 
he  shall  do  right ;  for  whatever  he  chooses,  on  that  theory,  is 
right.  When  men,  then,  have  come  to  the  point  of  asking 
whether  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  is  under  obligation  to 
the  moral  law,  then  there  is  an  acceptance  of  the  idea 
of  the  moral  law  which  inheres  in  the  very  nature  of  things, 
and  which  even  God  himself  is  not  at  liberty  to  disregard. 
Just  as  soon,  then,  as  this  came  to  be  a  practical  question 
in  human  thought,  then  the  world  was  face  to  face  with  this 
age-long  problem  as  to  how  the  suffering  and  pain  and  evil 
of  the  world  could  be  reconciled  with  this  idea  that  the 
Judge  of  all  the  earth  was  under  obligation  to  do  right. 
This  is  the  old  problem  concerning  which  the  author  of  the 
Book  of  Job  was  so  troubled.  The  whole  book  is  devoted 
to  an  attempt  at  settling  the  difficulty ;  and  yet  it  is  not  set- 
tled in  a  way  that  is  satisfactory  to  any  tender  and  enlight- 
ened modern  conscience. 

It  was  this  problem  that  the  seers  and  teachers  of  the  far 
East  pondered  over  as  they  fled  from  the  ways  of  men 
and  made  their  abodes  in  the  wilderness.  Buddha,  seeing 
so  much  human  suffering,  cannot  bear  to  live  as  a  prince 


Is  this  a  Good  World  89 

lifted  above  his  fellows  and  free  from  the  common  lot.  So 
he  renounces  his  throne,  and  gives  his  life  to  the  attempt  to 
find  out  how  he  can  alleviate  the  condition  of  his  fellows, 
how  he  can  solve  these  great  problems.  He  does  not  do  it 
from  any  trust  in  the  gods.  He  even  suggests,  with  a  bitter 
sort  of  irony,  that,  since  the  gods  seem  so  incapable  of  help- 
ing humanity  in  their  need,  perhaps  they  themselves  may  be 
in  need  of  help. 

This  is  the  problem  which  touched  the  hearts  and  troubled 
the  thought  of  the  old  Greek  tragedians,  the  one  we  find 
^Eschylus  raising  in  his  great  drama  of  Prometheus  Bound. 
Prometheus,  a  human  hero  and  helper,  chained  by  almighty 
Power  to  a  rock  in  the  Caucasus,  suffers  for  ages  because 
he  had  helped  men.  And  the  old  poet  tries  to  find  a  solu- 
tion of  this  apparent  utter  contradiction  between  the  al- 
mighty Power  and  the  almighty  Goodness. 

This  is  the  problem  that  Plato  attacked, —  the  problem  of 
philosophy,  indeed,  in  all  ages.  This  is  the  theme  of  the 
great  poem  of  Dante.  And  Milton,  when  he  sits  down  to 
write  his  epic,  declares  that  his  purpose  is 

"To  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men." 

He  does  not  succeed ;  for  no  man  reads  Paradise  Lost 
to-day  on  account  of  any  interest  he  may  have  in  Milton's 
attempted  solution  of  this  question.  This  is  the  great  prob- 
lem that  the  tender-hearted,  earnest  thinkers  of  all  the  world 
have  attempted.  And  thousands,  as  they  have  looked  over 
the  scene  of  a  suffering,  toiling,  struggling  humanity,  have 
lost  faith  in  God,  and  said,  It  cannot  be  that  there  is  any 
almighty  love  in  heaven,  and  these  things  here  on  earth ! 

It  is  said  that  the  young  Goethe  was  so  shocked  by  the 
sight  of  human  suffering  by  some  great  natural  calamity 
that  in  his  youth,  for  a  time,  he  became  an  utter  sceptic  as 


90  My  Creed 

to  any  supreme  wisdom  or  power  or  love.  John  Stuart 
Mill,  one  of  the  profoundest,  clearest-headed  thinkers  and 
one  of  the  tenderest-hearted  writers  of  the  modern  world, 
has  planted  himself  distinctly  and  definitely  on  this  ground. 
He  says  this  scene  of  suffering  compels  us  to  believe  one  of 
two  things, —  either  God  is  not  almighty  or  is  not  all-good. 
He  says  we  can  save  his  goodness  at  the  expense  of  his 
power,  or  we  can  save  his  power  at  the  expense  of  his  good- 
ness ;  but  he  thinks  we  cannot  believe  in  both. 

Robert  Ingersoll  makes  this  one  of  the  main  items  in  his 
perpetual  charge  against  the  justice  and  goodness  of  things. 
He  ridicules  the  idea  that  a  good  God  would  build  a  world 
for  his  children,  and  plant  it  with  disease,  fill  the  jungle  with 
serpents  and  wild  beasts,  make  the  sea  treacherous,  hide 
earthquakes  under  the  surface  of  the  ground,  and  rock  down 
buildings  after  they  had  been  constructed,  and  make  every- 
thing at  such  cross-purposes  that  it  would  be  practically  im- 
possible for  men  to  live  out  a  happy,  successful  life.  There 
seems  to  him  to  be  in  this  a  flat  contradiction. 

The  most  brilliant  statement  of  this  scepticism  that  I  have 
heard  in  many  a  day  was  that  which  was  given  to  us  by  Mr. 
Moncure  D.  Conway  at  a  meeting  of  the  Free  Religious 
Association.  He  pictured  nature  as  a  monster,  a  fiend, 
cruel,  heartless ;  eyes  made  of  the  flame  of  volcanoes ;  breath 
of  miasma,  poison,  pestilence  ;  an  incarnation  of  power  with- 
out any  heart  and  without  in  itself  any  evidence  of  goodness 
or  love. 

Let  us  now  glance  for  one  moment  at  the  items  in  this 
great  indictment  against  the  goodness  of  the  supreme  Power. 
First,  as  I  have  already  intimated,  men  perpetually  recount 
the  great  disasters  that  attend  the  on-going  of  the  mechan- 
ism of  nature  about  us.  They  picture  the  earthquake  shak- 
ing down  cities,  while  the  appalled  inhabitants  flee  from  their 


Is  this  a  Good  World  91 

homes  only  to  be  crushed  and  mangled  by  the  falling  ruins. 
They  picture  a  ship  at  sea,  the  plaything  of  the  storm,  at 
last  overwhelmed  by  the  waves,  while  the  helpless,  hopeless 
passengers  sink  shrieking  into  the  waves  that  have  no  heart, 
crying  to  the  winds  that  never  hear.  They  picture  to  us  fam- 
ine, and  the  thin  white  lips  and  wasted  faces,  the  hungering 
eyes  of  those  that  cry  to  the  pitiless  heaven  for  bread.  Then 
they  turn  to  disease,  and  point  us  to  the  mother  watching 
over  the  crib  of  the  child  wasting  away,  while  she  has  no 
power  to  stay  the  hand  that  is  leading  the  little  one  down 
into  the  shadow.  They  point  to  the  pain,  the  suffering,  that 
so  many  of  us  have  to  endure,  that  perhaps  all  of  us  have  to 
endure  more  or  less  on  our  brief  journey  between  the  cradle 
and  the  grave.  Then  they  turn  from  these,  and,  as  the  next 
count  of  their  indictment,  tell  us  of  the  moral  evils  of  the 
world, —  of  oppression,  of  cruelties,  of  the  slave-driver  with 
his  whip  lashing  the  worn  and  weary  worker,  and  compelling 
him  to  fulfil  his  task.  They  tell  us  of  tyrants,  like  Nero, 
sporting  with  the  pain  and  suffering  of  men.  They  point  out 
the  thousand  crimes  that  darken  the  annals  of  human  life. 
They  tell  us  of  the  evil  that  all  of  us  are  conscious  of  in  our 
own  hearts, —  the  conflict  between  our  sense  of  right,  between 
our  conscience  and  the  failures  of  our  accomplishment. 

Then,  as  another  count  still  in  this  long  indictment,  they 
point  out  the  illusions  of  life, —  how  life  seems  to  thwart  us, 
how  we  seem  to  strive  after  something  that  is  never  attained, 
how  our  hopes  are  blighted,  our  ideals  elude  us.  They  draw 
a  picture  of  men  and  women  seeking  after  high  things,  striv- 
ing to  accomplish  noble  results,  who  are  thwarted  by  a  life 
ever  at  cross-purposes,  until  at  last  they  stand  on  the  verge 
of  life's  horizon,  ready  to  pass  behind  the  curtain,  feeling 
that  they  have  accomplished  almost  nothing  of  that  which 
they  have  attempted, —  life  a  promise  never  fulfilled.  Then, 


92  My  Creed 

as  crowning  all  this  evil,  as  something  to  be  mentioned  by 
itself,  although  it  is  the  natural  result  of  all  this,  yet  a  some- 
thing to  be  mentioned  by  itself  because  it  stands  alone  in 
its  universal  terror,  they  bring  up  the  great  fact  of  death. 
Men  ask,  Is  it  possible,  in  the  face  of  facts  like  these,  to  be- 
lieve that  a  God  of  love  and  power  rules  the  world  ?  Is  it 
reasonable  to  believe  that  there  is  any  plan  or  purpose  in  all 
this  maze  of  apparent  contradiction  ? 

Yet  a  striking  thing  that  I  wish  you  to  note  especially, 
over  against  all  this  doubt,  all  this  questioning,  all  this  ap- 
palling contradiction,  is  the  fact  that,  in  all  ages  of  the  world, 
in  almost  all  human  hearts,  in  spite  of  this  doubt,  in  spite  of 
the  questioning  and  the  scepticism,  there  has  been  an  inex- 
pugnable faith,  a  trust  in  the  essential  righteousness,  justice, 
and  love  of  the  world.  Almost  all  men  in  all  ages,  right 
in  the  face  of  sin  and  sorrow  and  suffering  and  death,  have 
still  believed  that  love  and  justice  did  really  rule  this  old 
world.  They  have  demanded  that  they  should  rule  it, —  an 
imperious  demand  that  would  not  be  gainsaid, —  and  they 
have  declared  that,  if  they  could  not  see  the  issue  of  right- 
eousness and  truth,  why,  then,  there  must  be  some  other 
scene,  issue,  outcome,  that  should  balance  these, —  a  result 
that  should  justify  this  process.  This  faith  the  writer  of  the 
Book  of  Job  expressed  when  he  said,  while  they  were  taunting 
him  with  his  trust,  while  they  were  trying  to  make  him  give 
up  his  faith,  while  he  was  sitting  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  with 
all  his  hopes  in  ruins  about  him,  "  Though  he  slay  me,  yet 
will  I  trust  in  him."  There  is,  I  say,  then,  this  grand  fact  or 
this  stupendous  folly  of  the  human  heart, —  which? — that 
is  to  be  set  over  against  this  sin  and  suffering  and  evil  and 
sorrow.  But  remember  that  this  trust,  this  belief  in  an  over- 
ruling justice  and  goodness,  is  a  fact  as  real  as  is  an  earth- 
quake, a  famine,  a  fever,  a  war,  or  death.  It  is  a  fact  of 


Is  this  a  Good   World  93 

human  life,  a  manifestation  of  some  reality  in  the  nature  of 
things  that  wells  up  in  the  human  heart  as  this  inextinguish- 
able trust.  This  fact,  quite  as  much  as  the  other,  must  be 
accounted  for  and  explained  by  one  who  proposes  to  solve 
the  problem. 

Now,  then,  we  are  ready  to  turn  and  face  this  question, 
and  see  if  we  can  find  any  possible  solution.  I  propose  to 
look  at  it  for  a  little  while  from  the  side  of  our  conception 
of  God  as  related  to  the  world,  and  then  from  the  stand- 
point of  human  nature  and  human  life,  and  see  if  I  can 
find  any  possible  answer  to  the  question. 

In  the  first  place,  let  me  say  with  all  frankness  that  I 
believe  we  must  be  able  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there 
is  no  causeless,  no  useless,  no  aimless  sorrow  in  the  world, 
in  order  that  we  may  vindicate  the  divine  character  from  the 
charges  which  our  hearts  bring  against  him.  Tennyson  ex- 
presses the  faith  of  the  human  heart  in  those  famous  lines:  — 

"That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet; 
That  not  one  life  shall  be  destroyed, 
Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void, 
When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete. 

"  That  not  a  worm  is  cloven  in  vain  ; 
That  not  a  moth  with  vain  desire 
Is  shrivelled  in  a  fruitless  fire, 
Or  but  subserves  another's  gain." 

If  it  can  be  proved  beyond  question  that  even  a  worm,  a 
moth,  is  the  sport  of  an  arbitrary  power  that  cares  not  for 
suffering  or  sorrow,  but  merely  plays  with  it  for  no  end, 
then  I,  for  one,  would  surrender  my  faith  in  God.  I  say 
then,  frankly,  at  the  outset,  that  any  trust  in  God  that  is 
worthy  of  the  name  must  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there 
is  no  intentional,  no  needless,  no  useless  suffering  in  all  the 
world. 


94  My  Creed 

If  God  is  not  all  love  only,  but  all  wisdom  as  well,  then 
that  very  love  of  his  may  lead  him  to  make  us  suffer.  If 
God  be  really  perfect,  he  could  not  be  like  a  sentimental, 
(Childish  father  or  mother,  who  is  willing  to  give  its  child 
sugar-plums  every  time  it  cries  for  them,  without  any  regard 
to  the  natural  result  on  the  health  or  culture  of  the  child. 
The  wise  parent  many  a  time  must  make  the  child  suffer, 
even  though  his  own  heart  may  be  wrung  with  a  pain  that  is 
keener  than  that  which  he  inflicts. 

Now  let  us  look  at  the  nature  of  God  as  we  think  of  him 
as  related  to  this  problem  of  the  control  of  the  world.  It 
seems  to  me  that  a  large  part  of  our  difficulty  springs  out  of 
what  is  really  a  childish,  story-book  style  of  looking  at  the 
world.  We  take  it  for  granted,  most  thoughtlessly  as  I  be- 
lieve, that,  if  God  would,  he  could  make  a  world  that  would 
be  a  fairy  bower,  in  which  everybody  would  have  all  they 
wanted,  enjoy  all  that  they  desired,  pass  through  a  career 
that  seemed  inviting  to  them,  and,  when  they  had  attained 
the  end  of  all  they  cared  for,  like  prince  and  princess  in  the 
fairy  tale,  "live  happily  ever  after."  We  take  it  thought- 
lessly for  granted  that,  if  God  only  chose  to  make  a  world 
like  this,  and  people  it  with  beings  like  this,  he  might. 

Let  us  see  a  moment.  Are  there  any  limitations  to  om- 
nipotence ?  Can  God  do  anything  that  he  pleases  or  that 
we  may  think  he  ought  to  please?  We  are  aware  of  cer- 
tain things  which  in  their  very  nature  are  absurd,  and  have 
no  relation  to  the  question  of  any  power  he  may  be  supposed 
to  exercise.  God  could  not  make  a  river  without  banks 
to  enclose  the  water,  because  the  banks  are  a  part  of  the 
definition  of  a  river.  He  could  not  make  a  valley  with  the 
mountains  on  one  side  only ;  for,  unless  there  is  an  elevation 
on  both  sides,  it  would  be  no  valley.  He  could  not  make 
a  disc  without  the  limit  of  a  circle  enclosing  it.  It  would  be 


Is  this  a  Good  World  95 

no  disc ;  and  God  could  not  break  a  circle  at  any  point  and 
still  have  it  complete.  God  could  not  make  our  bodies  after 
a  certain  idea,  constructed  after  a  certain  pattern,  related  to 
the  forces  around  us  in  a  certain  way,  and  then  have  those 
bodies  complete  and  perfect,  without  any  regard  to  the  ques- 
tion whether  their  limitations  and  laws  were  regarded.  All 
this,  you  will  see,  is  absurd.  God  could  not  make  a  hun- 
dred-year-old oak  in  five  minutes.  He  could  not  transport 
us  from  Boston  to  New  York  without  our  passing  over  the 
distance  that  separates  the  two  cities.  These  physical  things 
in  their  very  nature  are  absurd  and  impossible.  They  have 
no  relation  to  the  question  of  omnipotence.  Are  there  no 
such  absurdities  in  the  realm  of  the  intellectual,  moral,  and 
spiritual  ?  We  shall  see  as  we  turn  to  the  human  side  that 
there  are  just  such  absurdities  in  this  kind  of  childish  dream 
which  we  have  of  a  perfect  world.  Let  us  turn,  then,  to  that 
human  side,  so  that  we  may  learn  whether  the  kind  of  world 
we  dream  of  is  a  possibility. 

Let  us  first  ask  what  is  the  real  end  and  aim  of  human 
life.  I  frankly  confess  to  you  that  I  believe  that  the  end 
and  aim  of  life  in  this  world  and  in  all  worlds  can  be  nothing 
else  but  happiness.  Feeling  is  deeper  than  thought,  feeling 
is  higher  than  thought.  No  man  ever  yet,  since  the  world 
began,  made  any  motion  except  under  the  impulse  of  feeling. 
No  man  ever  attempted  to  do  or  attain  anything  except 
under  the  motive  force  of  feeling.  The  desire  for  happi- 
ness is  the  universal  motive  of  human  action,  and  must  be 
in  the  nature  of  things.  Not  that  a  man  must  necessarily 
seek  happiness  this  moment.  He  may  choose  pain  as  an 
immediate  thing,  but  always  with  the  thought  that  this  pain 
is  to  issue  some  time,  somewhere,  in  larger  good  for  himself 
or  for  others ;  that  is,  in  human  happiness.  There  can  be 
no  other  ultimate  for  a  human  life  than  this.  I  cannot 


g6  My  Creed 

spend  any  more  time  in  enforcement  or  illustration  of  this 
idea.  Think  of  it  yourself,  and  see  if  you  can  find  any 
exception  to  the  statement. 

What  is  happiness?  How  shall  man  attain  it?  Happi- 
ness is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  pleasurable  or  agree- 
able feeling  which  accompanies  the  exercise  of  any  faculty 
or  power.  If  a  man  be  in  health,  the  performance  of  any 
natural  function  administers  pleasure  to  him.  If  there  is 
any  pain,  it  means  always  and  everywhere  that  something  is 
wrong.  If  a  man  be  in  perfect  health,  simply  to  breathe 
the  air  is  a  delight  to  him.  Even  to  see  the  blue  sky  or  the 
stars  at  night  may  be  an  ecstasy ;  to  feel  the  winds  fan  his 
cheek  may  be  an  inspiration.  If  breathing  the  air  or  look- 
ing at  the  light  or  feeling  the  wind  gives  pain,  it  means 
disease  or  something  wrong.  Pain  means  evil  always,  and 
happiness  means  always  good. 

Now,  then,  how  shall  this  happiness  be  attained  ?  If 
there  be  pleasure  in  the  exercise  of  any  faculty  or  in  the  per- 
formance of  any  function,  then  there  will  be  more  happiness, 
the  more  the  faculties  are  increased  and  enlarged.  Then, 
the  more  faculties  one  possesses  in  number  and  the  loftier 
they  are  in  degree  and  the  wider  in  range,  the  more  the 
capacity  for  happiness. 

Take  an  illustration.  You  can  get  a  certain  tone  that 
shall  seem  to  you  musical  by  touching  one  single  string  of 
a  musical  instrument ;  but  do  you  not  see  what  a  difference 
there  is  between  that  tone  and  a  whole  orchestra,  in  quan- 
tity, in  quality,  in  degree,  and  in  range  ?  A  man  who  is 
uncivilized,  who  knows  nothing  except  to  eat  and  drink  and 
sleep,  is  a  harp  with  one  or  two  strings.  Whatever  may 
enlarge  him,  broaden  him,  make  him  complete  physically, 
develop  his  brain,  his  power  of  thought,  until  it  touches  all 
the  magnificent  phases  of  the  natural  universe,  develop  him 


Is  this  a  Good  World  97 

morally  until  he  comes  into  sympathy  with  and  rejoices  or 
sorrows  with  all  the  rejoicing  and  sorrowing  of  all  the  world, 
develop  him  spiritually  until  he  finds  himself  akin  to  the 
infinite  and  eternal  Spirit  that  breathes  through  all  things, 
this  will  have  changed  him  from  an  instrument  with  only 
two  strings  to  an  orchestra,  played  on  by  all  the  world, 
capable  of  the  happiness  that  results  from  this  infinity  of 
development,  of  contact  with  the  infinity  of  things. 

If,  then,  you  will  make  a  man  capable  of  all  the  happiness 
that  is  possible  to  a  man,  you  must  develop  him,  you  must 
broaden  him,  deepen  him,  lift  him,  until  you  make  of  him 
all  that  is  possible  to  press  into  the  definition  of  a  man. 

Is  there  any  question  as  to  the  degrees  of  happiness  ?  If 
there  is  a  man  who  chooses  to  become  intoxicated,  and  finds 
his  highest  pleasure  in  that,  it  may  be  impossible  for  you  to 
prove  to  him  that  there  is  any  higher  pleasure  in  the  world 
than  that.  But  any  man  that  is  capable  of  a  higher  pleasure 
does  not  need  to  have  it  proved  to  him :  he  knows  it,  he 
feels  it,  he  thrills  with  the  inspiration  and  the  aspiration  of 
these  higher  things. 

Now,  then, —  you  see  I  am  leading  you  over  the  straightest 
road  that  I  am  acquainted  with,  to  the  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion,—  if  the  object  of  human  life  be  happiness,  why  is  it 
that  God  has  permitted  us  to  go  through  so  much  unhappi- 
ness  ?  I  am  ready  with  what  seems  to  me  the  answer.  I 
do  not  believe  that,  in  the  nature  of  things,  the  Omnipotent 
can  help  it :  it  is  no  question  of  power.  It  is  absurd  in  the 
nature  of  things  to  suppose  it  could  be  otherwise. 

Let  me  see  if  I  can  make  this  plain  by  one  or  two  ex- 
amples. For  a  man  to  become  a  man,  he  must  know,  he 
must  be  educated.  He  must  be  developed  mentally  for  him 
to  become  all  that  it  is  possible  for  him  to  be.  Man,  to  start 
with,  is  a  finite  being,  ignorant ;  and,  of  course,  he  must  know 


98  My  Creed 

through  the  process  of  learning.  Now  consider  a  moment. 
Would  it  be  possible  for  God  to  make  a  man  already  wise, 
without  his  going  through  the  experience  of  learning  ?  What 
do  we  mean  by  knowledge  ?  What  do  we  mean  by  learning  ? 
We  mean  simply  those  conclusions  and  those  inferences, 
those  thoughts,  those  convictions,  to  which  a  man  comes  as 
the  result  of  experience.  Can  a  man  have  experience  with- 
out experience  ?  It  is  a  contradiction  in  terms  and  an  ab- 
surdity on  the  face  of  it.  It  seems  to  me  in  the  very  nature 
of  things  impossible  that  God  should  create  any  finite  being 
all  wise,  without  his  going  through  the  process  of  learning, — 
just  as  absurd  as  to  suppose  God  creating  a  hundred-year-old 
oak  without  the  oak  starting  as  a  seedling,  without  its  laugh- 
ing in  the  sunshine,  wrestling  with  the  storm,  and  playing 
with  the  raindrops  through  a  hundred  years.  This  is  what 
knowledge  means.  Knowledge  means  experience,  or  con- 
clusions at  which  we  arrive  as  the  result  of  experience.  And 
I  believe  that  there  is  not  an  angel  in  heaven,  though  we 
dream  of  a  million  such,  who  is  any  wiser  than  an  infant 
child,  unless  he  has  gone  through  the  probation  of  expe- 
rience which  implies  error,  mistake,  correction,  and  finding 
out  the  truth  by  the  processes  of  making  mistakes  and  cor- 
recting them. 

Take  the  question  of  goodness.  Do  you  think  it  would  be 
possible  for  God  to  make  a  man  perfectly  good,  virtuous, 
clear  in  his  thought  concerning  right  and  wrong,  established 
in  the  right  as  the  result  of  a  conviction  that  it  is  best,  and  all 
without  any  experience  ?  Again,  it  seems  to  me  an  absurd- 
ity on  the  very  face  of  it.  How  do  we  know  that  right  is 
right  and  wrong  is  wrong,  except  by  trying  ?  How  can  any 
one  ever  discover,  except  by  this  process  of  trying  ?  And  so 
I  believe  that  all  of  the  sin,  all  of  the  wrong,  all  of  the  crime 
of  all  the  world,  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  the  results  of 


Is  this  a  Good  World  99 

the  experiences  of  ignorant,  undeveloped  characters  living 
freely  and  learning  the  laws  of  life  by  living. 

Suppose  God  wished  to  save  us  all  trouble :  he  could  do  it 
only  by  keeping  us  perpetually  children.  Take  one  of  your 
own  little  children.  Follow  it  all  the  time,  watch  over  it 
constantly ;  if  it  comes  to  a  little  obstacle,  lift  it  over ;  never 
allow  it  to  make  any  physical  or  mental  effort ;  tell  it  the 
answer  to  any  problem  it  may  have  at  school ;  save  it  all 
effort,  all  care,  all  trouble  of  any  kind, —  what  would  be  the 
result  ?  Simply  a  grown-up  infancy  instead  of  a  man  or  a 
woman.  Suppose  God  should  undertake  to  save  us  from  all 
pain,  from  all  disaster,  all  misfortune,  all  sorrow,  in  this 
world  :  it  would  be  only  a  world  full  of  grown-up  infants,  in- 
stead of  strong,  clear-headed,  noble-hearted  men  and  women 
who  had  wrought  out  the  results  of  character  through  the 
medium  of  experience. 

Let  us  glance  for  a  moment  at  some  of  those  great  indict- 
ments, and  see  how  they  look  to  us  in  the  light  of  these 
thoughts,  which  I  cannot  unfold  as  they  deserve,  for  lack  of 
time. 

People  make  a  great  point  against  the  goodness  of  God 
in  the  fact  that  there  are  such  things  as  cyclones  and  earth- 
quakes, storms  at  sea  and  pestilence.  But  what  are  these  ? 
What  is  an  earthquake  ?  An  earthquake  is  nothing  but  an 
incident  in  the  natural  and  necessary  growth  of  the  planet 
as  it  is  becoming  fitted  to  maintain  life,  a  little  tremor  in 
the  crust  of  the  earth  as  it  is  shrinking  while  it  is  going 
through  the  cooling  process  which  is  necessary  to  fit  it  to 
be  the  abode  of  man.  So  far  as  we  can  see,  God  could  not 
prevent  this  and  such  things  as  this  without  a  perpetual 
series  of  miracles.  In  the  first  place,  these  great  forces  that 
sweep  around  the  world,  that  cause  the  disasters  that  seem 
to  appall  us,  are  processes  in  the  natural  life  of  the  world. 


ioo  My  Creed 

Remember  that  these  forces  are  at  work  every  moment  of 
every  day,  of  every  month,  of  every  year,  and  have  been 
for  ages.  The  same  forces  are  at  work  all  the  time.  The 
forces  that  bring  disaster  and  death  are  the  ones  that  pro- 
duce all  the  good  and  beauty  and  glory  of  life;  and  the 
evils  that  result  from  their  operations  are  mathematically 
almost  as  nothing  when  compared  to  the  infinite,  unspeak- 
able, eternal  good  which  these  same  forces  produce.  As  I 
said,  these  incidental  evils  could  not  be  prevented  without 
a  perpetual  series  of  miracles.  If  God  should  govern  the 
world  in  this  way,  the  evils  that  would  result  from  our  not 
being  able  to  calculate  on  the  order  of  nature  would  infi- 
nitely overbalance  the  good.  We  should  be  demanding  of 
God  that  which  would  result  in  greater  evil  in  order  to  pre- 
vent a  lesser. 

Learning  how  to  adjust  ourselves  to  these  great  forces  is 
a  part  of  human  education,  a  necessary  part  of  all  human 
development.  Take  disease  and  pain.  I  think,  if  you  will 
study  the  problem  of  pain  carefully,  you  will  find  it  is  always 
tenderness  and  mercy.  Pain  is  simply  a  signal  set  up  on 
the  outer  limits  of  what  is  safe.  It  tells  us  when  to  stop. 
When  we  go  beyond  that,  we  suffer.  If  we  kept  within  the 
limits  of  the  laws  of  God  perfectly,  there  would  be  no  pain. 
There  could  be  none.  Pain,  then,  is  only  this  signal  which 
the  kindness,  wisdom,  and  goodness  of  God  sets  up  to  keep 
us  within  the  limits  of  the  laws  of  life. 

Let  us  look  at  the  grand  dissatisfactions  of  life,  the  unat- 
tained  ideals,  the  dreams  unfulfilled,  the  baffled  hopes, — 
what  do  they  mean  ?  Think  a  little  deeply,  and  do  not  get 
lost  in  a  superficial  view  of  things.  The  fact  that  men  and 
women  are  beings  that  this  world  has  never  been  able  to 
satisfy, —  what  does  it  mean  ?  It  is  the  most  magnificent 
promise  and  prophecy  that  God  ever  vouchsafed  out  of  his 


Is  this  a  Good   World  101 

merciful  heavens.  It  means  the  grandeur  of  human  nature. 
Suppose  we  could  be  satisfied  with  little,  ordinary,  cheap, 
commonplace  comfort  as  we  go  through  the  world  :  would  it 
not  mean  that  we  were  beings  capable  only  of  that  ?  What 
does  it  mean  when  we  see  Newton  standing  on  the  outer- 
most verge  of  his  life,  and  saying  of  all  the  achievement 
of  his  years  that  he  felt  he  was  only  a  little  child  play- 
ing with  pebbles  on  the  seashore,  having  gathered  a  few 
brighter  and  fairer  ones  than  others  had  discovered?  Noth- 
ing less  than  the  touch  of  the  infinite  in  this  poor,  petty, 
commonplace  humanity  of  ours !  It  means  that  we  are  but 
a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  that  we  are  sons  and  daugh- 
ters of  God,  and  capable  of  an  infinite  expansion,  an  endless 
career. 

One  word  at  the  close  —  it  needs  but  one  —  on  this  great 
fact  of  death.  Is  death  an  impeachment  of  the  divine  mercy 
and  love  ?  That  all  depends.  If  any  one  can  prove  to  me 
that  there  is  nothing  beyond,  that  the  world  falls  into  an 
abyss,  that  nothing  is  the  end,  then  he  may  have  made 
a  point.  But,  at  present,  no  one  is  able  to  prove  that  death 
is  anything  more  than  an  incident  in  human  growth.  For 
aught  anybody  knows,  it  is  only  another  birth,  only  the  open- 
ing of  a  doorway  to  let  us  through  into  something  grander 
and  higher.  Death,  for  all  that  the  wisest  on  earth  may 
know,  is  the  tenderest,  kindest,  most  loving  gift  of  an  all- 
loving  heavenly  Father. 


MORAL  FOUNDATIONS. 


IN  the  midst  of  the  transitions  and  changes  which  are  felt 
in  the  regions  of  our  religious  thought  and  life  there  is  great 
danger  that  people  will  believe  that  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples of  right  and  wrong  are  being  shaken,  or  at  any  rate 
obscured.  Sometimes,  a  vine  growing  vigorously  from  its 
own  root  twines  itself  for  support  in  the  air  around  the  trunk 
and  limbs  of  a  tree.  It  has  an  independent  life  of  its  own, 
but  it  seems  to  be  dependent  upon  this  which  it  has  made  its 
temporary  support.  After  a  time,  the  tree  grows  old,  begins 
to  decay,  shows  signs  of  weakening,  until  there  is  danger 
that  the  first  storm  will  rock  it  down,  perhaps  breaking  and 
endangering  the  vine  in  its  fall.  It  is  needful  to  remove  the 
tree  which  has  been  for  a  time  an  artificial  support.  Many 
persons,  looking  on  and  seeing  how  intimately  the  two  are 
linked  together,  may  feel  that  the  tree  is  an  essential  part  of 
the  life  of  the  vine,  and  that  the  one  cannot  be  taken  away 
without  seriously  injuring  the  other.  Yet  the  danger  of  a 
fall  threatens,  and  the  process  must  be  carried  out. 

I  take  it  that  there  are  thousands  of  people  in  the  world, 
to-day,  who  are  bitterly  opposing  light  and  freedom  and  dis- 
cussion in  matters  of  religion,  chiefly  because  they  fear  that 
speculation  in  this  direction  seriously  endangers  the  funda- 
mental moral  principles  which  underlie  the  daily  life  of  the 
world.  They  have  been  taught  for  ages  that  the  principal 
reasons  for  conduct  were  faith  in  this  or  that  dogma  of  the- 


Moral  Foundations  103 

ology,  in  this  or  that  institute  of  religion.  They  fight  ear- 
nestly, desperately,  against  those  who  attack  or  attempt  to 
remove  these  artificial  and  temporary  supports  of  morals,  as 
though  they  were  the  enemies  of  the  moral  life  of  the  world. 
But  there  is  no  sort  of  question  in  the  minds  of  intelligent, 
thoughtful  people  that  these  religious  institutions  of  the  past 
and  these  theological  dogmas  of  the  olden  time,  although 
morality  may  have  twined  its  tendrils  about  them,  are  grow- 
ing old,  decaying,  and  becoming  ready  to  fall.  They  need 
to  be  removed,  they  must  be  removed ;  and  the  moral  prin- 
ciples of  human  life  must  be  shown  to  be  capable  of  rooting 
themselves  in  their  own  soil,  growing  up  in  their  own  air, 
living,  flourishing,  bearing  fruit  by  virtue  of  their  inherent 
divine  life  and  power. 

We  have  been  taught  for  ages  that  the  principal  reasons 
for  conduct  were  derived  from  supernatural  authority, —  now 
the  authority  of  a  church,  now  the  authority  of  a  book, —  but 
in  any  case  that  there  was  no  natural,  inherent,  necessary 
reason  for  pursuing  this  course  rather  than  that,  apart  from 
the  fact  that  God  through  some  channel  had  commanded 
thus  and  so. 

The  very  first  story  we  read  as  children,  in  our  Bibles,  en- 
forces this  old  lesson.  The  newly  made  pair  are  placed  in 
the  garden  of  Eden.  God  issues  a  command, —  the  first 
divine  command  in  history, —  that  they  are  not  to  touch  the 
fruit  of  a  certain  tree.  There  is  no  inherent,  necessary  evil 
in  the  fruit  of  this  tree.  Adam  and  Eve  might  have  eaten 
to  their  hearts'  content,  so  far  as  the  story  goes,  if  God  had 
not  chosen  arbitrarily  to  tell  them  that  they  must  not,  and 
that,  if  they  did,  he  would  inflict  a  certain  penalty.  This 
first  teaching  of  the  Bible  concerning  right  and  wrong  is 
that  right  and  wrong  are  purely  arbitrary  matters,  dependent 
exclusively  upon  the  arbitrary  command  of  an  external 


IO4  My  Creed 

power.  God  has  been  represented  in  this  way  as  a  king 
sitting  outside  of  this  little  kingdom  of  earth.  He  is  made 
to  legislate  according  to  his  own  will.  The  laws  of  God,  in 
other  words,  have  not  been  supposed  to  be  a  part  of  the 
nature  of  things,  springing  out  of  the  earth  and  having  re- 
lations to  our  conceptions  of  body,  brain,  heart,  and  soul, 
but  as  purely  arbitrary  laws  as  any  that  the  General  Court 
might  pass  during  one  of  its  winter  sessions  in  the  State 
House. 

To  make  this  evil  all  the  greater, —  for  I  hold  and  will  try 
to  show  you  before  I  am  through  that  it  is  an  evil, —  this 
world  has  been  pictured  in  the  religious  writings  of  men  as 
a  place  full  of  all  possible  delights,  a  garden  where  are  beau- 
tiful flowers,  luscious  fruits,  tempting  perfumes,  but  every- 
where lurking  dangers, —  a  serpent  beneath  every  flower, 
poison  in  the  luscious  juices  of  all  the  fruits,  death  threaten- 
ing everywhere,  if  any  one  chooses  to  carry  out  his  own 
will  and  lives  according  to  his  own  desire.  The  broad  way, 
supposed  to  be  trodden  by  the  great  masses  of  men,  has 
ever  been  pictured  as  a  place  where  alluring,  tempting,  beau- 
tiful forms  are  represented  as  dancing  along  its  broad  path- 
way, with  music  and  flowing  drapery,  alluring  visions  of  love- 
liness. The  great  masses  of  men  have  been  pictured  as 
following  after  these  tempting  forms ;  and  all  has  been  sup- 
posed to  be  well,  except  that  at  the  end  there  was  a  gulf,  and 
that  God  had  threatened  to  inflict  arbitrary  and  endless  tort- 
ure on  all  who  walked  this  flowery  way.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  path  of  righteousness,  the  way  of  virtue,  truth,  and  right, 
has  been  pictured  as  narrow,  steep,  and  hard. 

Pleasure,  in  popular  religious  belief,  has  been  combined 
with  doing  wrong.  Evil  has  been  pointed  out  as  being  a 
"primrose  path  of  dalliance,"  right  as  a  rugged,  hard  way. 
Only  God  had  chosen  that  those  who  walked  this  hard  way 


Moral  Foundations  105 

now,  depriving  themselves  of  pleasure  and  enjoyment,  should 
by  and  by  be  rewarded  with  unspeakable  joys  in  another 
life ;  and  those  who  chose  to  be  happy  now,  should  be  re- 
warded —  or  punished  rather  —  with  the  opposite,  when  this 
We  had  come  to  an  end.  This,  I  say,  has  been  the  popular 
conception.  This  has  been  the  picture  drawn  from  the  pul- 
pit, written  in  books,  held  up  to  the  imagination  of  men. 
Right  and  wrong  have  been  treated  as  purely  arbitrary  things, 
that  miht  have  been  something  else  if  God  had  chosen  to 
issue  another  kind  of  law. 

The  reason  for  our  supposing  that  we  must  deny  ourselves 
all  pleasure,  and  walk  in  this  rough,  hard  way  of  life,  and 
look  for  our  reward  only  in  another  sphere,  has  been  the 
supposed  divine  authority  of  a  church,  a  book,  that  has  said 
that  such  is  God's  will.  Do  you  wonder  that  after  ages  of 
teaching  like  this,  when  men  and  women  come  at  last  to 
doubt  the  reality  of  this  supposed  divine  authority,  either 
the  church  or  book,  there  is  a  tremendous  reaction,  a  turn- 
ing of  the  tide  in  another  direction  ?  Do  you  wonder  that 
there  is  danger  of  what  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  has  already 
pointed  out  as  imminent, —  amoral  interregnum;  that  people 
should  be  confused  in  their  opinions  of  right  and  wrong,  and 
wonder  whether  there  are  any  real,  permanent,  eternal  dis- 
tinctions ;  whether,  after  all,  they  are  not  a  mere  matter  of 
opinion,  changing,  fluctuating,  one  thing  in  this  age  and 
another  in  the  next  ?  A  spectacle  like  this  we  do  see,  at  any 
rate ;  and  it  seems  to  me  a  very  natural  result  by  way  of 
reaction  from  this  old  teaching. 

Only  a  little  while  ago,  a  lady  called  on  me  to  converse 
concerning  her  own  anxiety  over  some  young  men,  friends 
of  hers,  who  were  enunciating  the  principles  of  what  they 
regarded  as  the  new  philosophy  of  life,  springing  out  of 
the  decay  of  these  old  external  authorities,  and  the  natural 


io6  My  Creed 

result,  as  they  seemed  to  believe,  of  the  science  of  evolution. 
They  said  :  If  you  go  far  enough  back,  you  find  a  time  when 
slavery  was  a  good  thing :  it  was  an  improvement  on  what 
had  been  the  social  condition.  Slavery  then  was  a  virtue. 
The  condition  of  things  has  changed  a  little ;  and  now  we 
regard  it  as  a  vice.  But  it  is  all  a  matter  of  time,  of  the 
difference  in  civilization :  there  is  no  essential,  no  eternal 
distinction.  There  was  a  time  in  the  history  of  the  world 
when  polygamy  was  a  distinct  and  definite  advance  in  social 
relations.  So  polygamy  became  a  virtue ;  and,  under  certain 
other  changes,  it  might  again  become  a  good  thing.  That 
is  the  logic  they  use.  Virtue  and  vice,  they  say,  are  only 
matters  of  convention,  so  far  as  we  understand  it.  It  all 
depends  on  the  opinion  of  the  people  in  the  midst  of  whom 
you  live,  on  that  which  is  regarded  as  respectable.  And 
they  carry  it  so  far  as  to  say :  Suppose  we  do  gamble  a  little, 
and  suppose  people  find  it  out,  it  does  not  make  any  differ- 
ence in  our  social  standing.  We  are  received  in  good  society 
just  the  same.  Our  friends  do  not  look  upon  it  as  such  a 
bad  thing,  after  all.  We  are  fairly  good-looking,  well  edu- 
cated, our  social  position  is  fine ;  we  are  successful  in  busi- 
ness, or  our  fathers  have  been ;  we  are  good  company,  good 
society.  We  would  be,  either  of  us,  a  good  "  catch  "  for  a 
mother  looking  out  for  some  one  to  marry  her  daughter. 
Suppose  there  are  these  little  things  about  us  that  the 
stricter  moralists  of  the  world  look  upon  askance ;  suppose 
we  do  transgress  and  break  over :  what  difference  does  it 
make,  so  long  as  our  social  standing  is  unaffected  by  it  and 
our  friends  do  not  turn  us  out  of  their  society?  Besides, 
a  future  life  is  all  uncertain.  The  old  threat  of  hell  has 
turned  into  a  bugaboo,  to  which  no  brave  man  pays  any 
attention.  What  reason  is  there  why  we  should  not  do  as 
we  please  ? 


Moral  Foundations  107 

This  is  the  kind  of  reasoning  that  many  are  engaged  in  at 
the  present  time.  It  seems  to  me  it  is  worth  our  while,  then, 
to  raise  the  question  whether  there  are  distinctions  between 
right  and  wrong,  whether  they  are  essential,  whether  they 
are  permanent  and  clear.  Let  us  find  out  where  we  are, 
what  we  are  doing,  which  way  lies  the  path  of  right,  if  there 
be  any  such  path,  what  is  the  unsafe  and  wrong. 

There  is  just  enough  truth  in  this  kind  of  fallacious  rea- 
soning to  which  I  have  been  referring  to  make  it  easy  for 
people  to  be  led  astray  by  it.  There  was  a  time  when 
slavery  was  a  distinct  and  definite  advance  on  the  preceding 
social  conditions  of  the  world, —  when,  relatively,  it  was  good. 
There  was  a  time  when  polygamy  was  an  advance  ;  and,  rela- 
tively, it  was  good.  There  have  been  times  in  the  history  of 
the  world  when  a  war  was  better  than  peace  in  the  existing 
conditions.  But  here  is  where  the  fallacy  is  to  be  found. 
They  say  right  and  wrong  are  only  relative  things,  relative 
to  the  changing  whims  and  fancies  of  the  world.  Right  and 
wrong  are  relative  things ;  but  they  are  relative,  not  to  the 
changing  whims  and  fancies  of  the  world,  but  to  the  chang- 
ing conditions  of  human  life  and  the  changing  needs  of  a 
growing  society.  The  principles  of  right  and  wrong  are 
eternal,  as  eternal  as  that  Power  that  makes  for  righteous- 
ness. The  application  changes  infinitely  with  the  changing 
conditions  of  men  and  women.  It  is,  for  example,  the  duty 
of  one  man  always,  so  far  as  he  can,  to  help  another  man. 
But  what  particular  thing  shall  constitute  that  help  will,  of 
course,  be  purely  relative  to  the  man's  condition  and  his 
need  at  the  time.  The  principles,  then,  I  say,  we  shall  find 
are  changeless  and  eternal. 

Now  let  us  raise  the  question  as  to  what  we  mean  by 
right  and  wrong.  What  is  a  virtue  ?  What  is  a  vice  ? 
Right,  virtue,  and  all  kindred  terms  are  nothing  more  nor 


io8  My  Creed 

less  than  ideas,  words,  by  which  we  represent  the  truth  which 
has  been  wrought  out  by  human  experience, —  that  certain 
kinds  of  thinking,  certain  ways  of  feeling,  certain  methods 
of  conduct,  are  helpful  to  man,  and  that  others  are  hurtful. 
Right  is  that  which  helps  the  life ;  which  makes  it  fuller  and 
deeper,  higher  and  broader;  which  makes  one  more  of  a 
man  in  every  way;  which  helps  society;  which  makes  for 
health,  for  life,  for  growth,  for  happiness. 

Evil,  vice,  wrong,  are  those  kinds  of  thought,  those  types 
of  feeling,  those  courses  of  conduct,  which  hurt  the  world; 
which  take  away  from  its  life,  fulness,  height,  depth,  breadth; 
which  diminish  the  power  of  men  and  women  to  develop,  to 
grow,  to  become  more ;  which  interfere  with  their  happiness. 
There  are  eternal  distinctions,  wherever  you  may  draw  the 
lines  in  practice. 

Now,  a  large  part  of  the  confusion,  a  large  part  of  this 
fallacious  reasoning  that  I  have  referred  to,  springs  out  of 
the  fact  that  there  have  been  in  the  history  of  the  world, 
from  the  beginning,  two  classes  of  thoughts  and  feelings  and 
actions  which  have  been  looked  upon  as  virtuous  and  right, 
two  classes  which  have  been  looked  upon  as  evil  and  wrong. 
One  class  is  conventional :  the  other  class  is  real.  In  order 
that  we  may  pursue  our  way  with  clear  thought  and  know 
where  we  are,  we  need  to  draw  very  clearly  this  distinction 
between  the  conventional  virtues  and  the  real  ones,  that  we 
may  know  where  the  emphasis  of  our  lives  ought  to  be  laid. 

If  you  read  the  history  of  any  religion, —  for  this  is  not 
confined  to  Christianity, —  you  will  find  that  there  has  been 
this  distinction  between  conduct  and  character  among  men, 
as  they  have  been  variously  related  to  each  other.  There 
are  thoughts  and  feelings  and  courses  of  actions  that  turn  on 
what  society  may  say;  and  there  is  a  feeling  that  some 
power,  God  or  gods,  outside  of  human  society,  demands 


Moral  Foundations  109 

certain  beliefs,  certain  feelings,  certain  actions,  from  men, 
that  have  no  necessary  relation  to  human  welfare.  Many 
a  time,  these  supposed  virtues  and  rights  have  been  looked 
upon  as  more  important  than  those  which  had  a  real  and 
direct  bearing  on  human  well-being. 

As  an  illustration  of  what  I  mean,  go  back  to  Jerusalem, 
to  Jesus'  preaching.  Do  you  not  remember  how  he  brings 
it  as  a  charge  against  the  pious  people  of  his  time  that  they 
were  very  careful  about  their  tithes  of  mint  and  anise  and 
cumin ;  very  careful  about  attending  to  the  services  of  the 
temple  and  synagogue,  about  what  sort  of  religious  robes 
they  wore,  their  phylacteries,  their  garments,  the  width  of 
the  borders,  the  way  they  were  made  and  decorated ;  but,  he 
said,  while  you  pay  such  scrupulous  attention  to  these  things, 
you  neglect  the  weightier  matters  of  the  law, —  justice,  truth, 
righteousness  ? 

Go  back  to  Athens,  and  stand  for  a  moment  beside  Soc- 
rates, and  those  that  are  putting  him  to  death  because  he 
has  broken  this  conventional,  unreal  law  of  right,  in  the 
interest  of  that  which  really  touched  human  well-being  and 
progress.  They  are  putting  him  to  death  for  his  very  virtues, 
condemning  him  in  the  light  of  the  conventional  virtue  which 
he  disregarded,  and  punishing  him  for  the  help  he  was  ren- 
dering to  his  fellow-man. 

Come  down  to  Boston  thirty  years  ago,  and  see  the  same 
principle  at  work, —  Theodore  Parker  outcast,  opposed  by 
those  who  should  have  been  his  friends.  Why?  Because 
he  dared  to  say  certain  things  against  the  popular  supersti- 
tious ideas  about  the  Bible,  concerning  the  character  and 
rank  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth ;  and  all  the  time  he  was  standing, 
as  no  other  man  of  his  age  did  stand,  for  real  righteousness, 
for  love,  for  justice,  for  human  help.  These  as  illustrations 
of  this  division  that  runs  down  the  ages  and  cleaves  in  two 


no  My  Creed 

every  religion  between  the  conventional  and  the  real  right 
and  wrong. 

Do  you  not  know  to-day  that  you  would  be  more  seriously 
condemned  by  the  popular  opinion  of  a  large  section  of 
Boston  for  breaking  over  some  conventional  rule  or  statute 
or  law  than  you  would  be  for  being  hard-hearted  or  unkind, 
or  for  refusing  to  help  a  friend  in  trouble,  for  declining  to 
live  out  the  real  virtue  of  human  life  ?  A  friend  of  mine,  a 
teacher  in  one  of  Boston's  public  schools,  said  in  my  house 
within  a  year,  her  sister  having  died  recently,  that  she  was 
afraid  God  had  taken  her  sister  away  from  her  because  she 
had  not  attended  church  more  frequently  during  Lent. 
Think  of  it !  God  a  kind  of  being  who  kills  our  friends  be- 
cause we  do  not  go  to  church  in  Lent ! 

We  need,  then,  to  draw  these  distinctions  very  clearly, 
and  so  be  rid  of  a  large  part  of  the  confusion  that  attaches 
itself  to  this  subject.  The  conventional  rights  and  wrongs, 
virtues  and  vices,  are  and  must  be  whims,  changing  with  cli- 
mate, people,  city,  town,  clique,  class,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  they  are  airy  nothings,  having  no  real  power,  no  real 
existence,  no  real  value.  But  the  real  virtues  and  vices  of 
the  world  inhere  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  and  are  eter- 
nal and  changeless.  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  has  somewhere 
said  —  I  quote  only  the  thought  —  that  the  moral  law  is  one 
with  gravitation.  The  real  laws  of  right  and  wrong  are  just 
as  much  a  part  of  the  nature  of  things  as  is  gravitation, — 
quite  as  universal,  quite  as  changeless,  quite  as  eternal. 

I  said  a  moment  ago  that  virtue,  goodness,  right,  were 
only  words  for  the  conditions  of  existence,  of  life,  growth, 
'happiness.  Let  us  see.  We  shall  find  this  principle  true 
from  the  lowest  up  to  the  highest.  I  wish  to  touch  on  a  few 
illustrative  examples. 

Everything  that  exists  is  conditioned,  outlined,  by  certain 


Moral  Foundations  ill 

limits  which  make  it  what  it  is  and  keep  it  from  being  any- 
thing else.  Suppose  you  stand  by  the  borders  of  a  lake. 
What  is  a  lake  ?  It  is  a  basin  of  water.  Suppose  an  earth- 
quake should  break  down  one  side,  so  that  the  water  should 
all  run  out :  would  it  be  a  lake  any  longer  ?  You  have  broken 
the  conditions  of  a  lake ;  and  it  ceases  to  be  one.  What  is  a 
circle  ?  It  is  a  line  every  point  of  which  is  at  the  same  dis- 
tance from  a  point  within  it  called  the  centre.  Suppose  you 
change  that,  and  have  some  part  of  the  circle  not  the  same 
distance  from  the  centre  as  the  other  parts.  Have  you  a 
circle  any  longer  ?  You  have  broken  the  conditions  of  the 
existence  of  a  circle ;  and  it  ceases  to  be.  Do  you  not  begin 
to  gain  a  glimpse  of  that  old  law  enunciated  by  the  prophet, 
which  lies  at  the  basis  of  this  whole  discussion, — "  The  soul 
that  sinneth  it  shall  die  "  ?  Death  is  the  penalty,  the  eternal, 
inexorable  penalty  of  wrong,  in  the  very  nature  of  things, — 
not  because  any  God  has  threatened  to  punish. 

Go  up  a  little  higher,  above  these  inanimate  things.  Go 
out  into  your  garden  in  the  spring,  and  look  at  a  rosebush. 
What  is  a  rosebush  ?  A  certain  kind  of  bush  that  will  grow 
in  a  certain  kind  of  soil,  that  puts  forth  a  certain  kind  of 
buds  that  unfold  into  a  certain  kind  of  blossom,  with  a  per- 
fume of  its  own.  Change  the  conditions  on  which  a  rose  is 
dependent ;  and,  though  something  else  may  live,  unless  you 
obey  the  laws  of  the  life  of  the  rose's  being,  it  will  cease 
to  be. 

Come  up  to  man.  Our  bodies  are  what  they  are  because 
they  are  constituted  according  to  certain  conditions.  At 
every  single  point  of  these  bodies,  external  and  internal,  there 
is  an  inexorable  law  that  conditions  it  and  makes  it  what  it 
is.  Break  the  laws  of  physical  life  and  health, —  though  the 
body  will  endure  a  great  deal, —  and  break  them  often 
enough,  and  continue  it  long  enough,  and  there  is  sickness> 


112  My  Creed 

and,  a  little  later,  death.  Can  you  help  it  ?  Could  God  help 
it?  Could  any  omnipotent  power  constitute  a  body  so  that 
it  could  be  a  body  and  not  be  a  body  at  the  same  time ;  so 
that  it  could  have  health  on  certain  conditions,  and  not  have 
it  on  the  same  conditions ;  so  that  it  could  live  and  not  live 
at  the  same  time  ?  Health  is  conditioned  on  these  things  ; 
and  Omnipotence  itself  cannot  change  the  law. 

Come  up  into  the  region  of  the  brain,  the  intellect.  Here, 
again,  on  certain  conditions,  on  certain  uses  of  the  brain, 
you  can  make  it  an  organ  for  the  discovery  and  the  verifica- 
tion of  truth,  so  that  you  shall  live  in  a  world  of  truth  and 
reality.  But  break  over  the  laws  of  the  mind,  and  can  you 
have  a  man  that  shall  live  in  the  world  of  reality  ?  It  is 
absurd  on  the  face  of  it. 

But  look  at  the  same  thought  in  regard  to  the  higher 
nature,  the  moral,  spiritual  nature  of  man ;  and  right  means 
simply  that  course  of  action  which  keeps  us  within  the  limits 
of  the  laws  of  life  as  they  exist  in  the  very  nature  of  things. 
As  I  had  occasion  to  say  to  you  last  Sunday,  just  in  so  far 
as  we  keep  within  these  limits  and  develop  ourselves  accord- 
ing to  these  conditions  of  health,  just  as  we  become  more  and 
more,  broader,  deeper,  higher,  just  in  so  far  do  we  become 
capable  of  grander,  nobler  happiness,  because  we  have 
more  faculties,  functions,  to  exercise ;  and,  exercising  them 
healthfully  and  according  to  their  nature,  the  natural  result 
is  the  music  of  joy. 

The  penalty,  then,  of  all  transgression  is,  first,  illness  and 
disorder,  and  this,  carried  far  enough,  death.  There  needs 
no  external  law.  There  needs  no  God  sitting  on  a  throne  to 
execute  moral  laws.  There  needs  no  hell  in  the  next  world 
any  more  than  there  is  in  this.  It  is  only  a  carrying  out  of 
the  same  principle  in  any  world  and  in  any  time.  The  real, 
the  essential  laws  of  right  and  wrong  are  self-existent  and 


Moral  Foundations  113 

self-executing ;  and  he  who  fancies  he  can  break  over  these 
laws  of  right  and  truth  and  escape  the  penalty  is  fancying 
that  he  can  outwit  the  Eternal  by  achieving  an  absurdity 
that  is  beyond  the  power  of  Omnipotence  itself. 

But,  now,  let  us  look  at  one  or  two  practical  phases  of  this 
subject.  It  has  passed  into  a  proverb  that  a  man  who  wishes 
to  succeed  in  this  world  can  do  it  by  cultivating  a  hard 
head  and  a  hard  heart.  The  man  who  listens  to  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  world,  its  wants  and  sorrows,  who  gives  freely 
on  every  hand,  who  suffers  as  others  suffer,  who  feels  the 
touch  of  human  sympathy  at  every  hour  of  every  day,  who 
cannot  bear  to  let  people  go  their  own  ways,  however  hard 
those  ways  may  be, —  he  is  not  the  man  who  most  readily 
gets  rich.  The  man  who  chooses  to  keep  merely  within  the 
limits  of  the  law,  working  night  and  day  to  attain  his  ends, 
refusing  the  calls  of  charity,  who  does  not  try  to  help  his  fel- 
lows, but  looks  out  merely  for  himself, —  this  man  will  of 
course  save  more  money,  get  rich  in  a  shorter  time  than  the 
man  who  pursues  an  opposite  course.  But  does  he  suffer  no 
penalty  ?  He  suffers  the  penalty  of  ceasing  to  be  a  man.  He 
suffers  the  penalty  of  paying  for  this  lower  type  of  success  all 
that  is  noblest  and  highest  in  him.  If  a  man  chooses  to  live 
in  the  basement  of  his  house,  perhaps  you  cannot  induce  him 
to  go  upstairs ;  and  he  may  after  a  while  forget  that  there 
is  any  upstairs,  and  be  quite  satisfied  with  the  coal-bin  and 
the  kitchen,  simply  feeding  his  animal  wants.  But  do  you 
not  see  that  the  man  who  pursues  that  course  of  life  becomes 
atrophied  in  all  the  higher  faculties  of  his  being?  He  de- 
grades himself  to  the  level  of  a  merely  animal  life.  He  may 
succeed  in  becoming  a  rich  animal ;  but  he  is  not  a  rich  man, 
unless  heart  and  brain,  kindliness,  love,  justice,  truth,  char- 
ity, are  also  equally  developed  in  his  nature. 

But  the  question  is  sometimes  raised  whether  a  man  is 


114  My  Creed 


really  punished,  or  needs  to  pay  attention  to  punishment,  if 
he  does  not  consciously  suffer,  if  he  does  not  feel  bad  about 
it.  If  a  man  has  no  conception  of  anything  higher,  and  you 
cannot  convince  him  that  there  is  anything  higher,  I  do  not 
know  what  motive  force  you  can  bring  to  bear  upon  him  to 
change  his  method  of  thinking  and  his  course  of  life  ;  but 
every  physician  knows  that,  when  a  man's  body  is  diseased 
in  such  a  way  that  it  ceases  to  be  sensitive  to  pain,  he  has 
reached  a  point  that  is  fatal.  So  long  as  there  is  a  keen 
sensitiveness  to  suffering,  it  shows  that  the  body  is  alive. 
The  forces  of  life  are  strong  in  it  still,  and  it  may  have  the 
power  to  recuperate.  But,  when  a  man  reaches  the  point 
that  he  no  longer  suffers  with  the  disease,  then  the  physician 
gives  him  up.  Nothing  waits  him  but  death.  If  you  cannot 
prove  to  a  man  that  it  is  a  very  bad  thing  to  be  in  that  condi- 
tion of  insensibility  to  his  life,  you  can  only  look  upon  him 
from  a  higher  level,  and  pity  him. 

It  is  sometimes  urged  against  our  liberal  thought  that  we 
have  no  such  mighty  motives  to  bring  to  bear  on  people  as 
the  hell  which  we  have  repudiated  ;  and  people  say,  You  can- 
not get  along  without  hell,  you  need  it  as  a  moral  motive.  I 
could  the  more  readily  believe  that,  provided  history  had 
shown  us  that  this  threat  of  hell  had  been  effective  in  mak- 
ing people  any  better  in  the  olden  time  than  they  are  now. 
But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  when  everybody  believed  it  so  thor- 
oughly that  never  a  doubt  or  question  was  raised,  people 
were  not  better  than  they  are  to-day.  They  were  not  so 
good.  The  supposed  tremendous  motive  force  of  a  belief 
in  hell  was  lost  by  the  ease  with  which  the  Church  made  a 
way  for  them  to  escape. 

Take  one  more  illustration.  Suppose  a  man  goes  out 
into  the  world  with  the  theory  that  he  is  going  to  do  just  as 
he  pleases.  He  will  be  practical,  shrewd,  wise.  He  will  not 


Moral  Foundations  115 

run  the  risk  of  getting  into  the  clutches  of  the  law ;  for  that 
would  defeat  his  purposes.  He  means  to  maintain  a  certain 
average  of  respectability.  He  knows  that  he  would  lose 
more  than  he  would  gain  by  losing  the  countenance  of  his 
fellow-men ;  but,  within  these  limits,  he  proposes  to  indulge 
himself  in  every  way,  satisfy  every  whim  and  every  desire. 
He  says  there  is  no  danger  of  any  future  punishment, 
and  this  matter  of  right  and  wrong  is  all  a  matter  of  whim, 
changed  by  conditions  of  climate.  What  would  be  the  result  ? 

If  he  does  wrong, —  that  is,  if  he  lowers,  degrades,  his  own 
life ;  if  he  takes  away  from  the  sum  total  of  the  life  of  some 
other  person  in  the  gratification  of  his  own  indulgence  ;  if  he 
degrades  another  life,  and  makes  it  less  capable  of  growth 
in  all  that  is  noble  and  true ;  if  he  takes  away  from  the  sum 
total  of  human  welfare ;  if  he  lowers  the  level  of  the  virtu- 
ous power  and  impulse  of  his  time,  and  puts  farther  away 
the  day  of  human  triumph  over  evil,  the  day  when  it  shall  be 
trodden  under  foot, —  what  does  he  do  ?  He  degrades  him- 
self first,  takes  away  from  his  own  life.  If  he  carries  it  far 
enough,  he  will  produce  physical  death.  If  he  carries  it  not 
so  far  as  that,  he  may  produce  moral,  spiritual  death,  leaving 
himself  only  animal.  As  regards  his  fellow-men,  what  does 
he  become  ?  He  becomes  precisely  what  this  very  man  in 
a  business  career  becomes, —  one  who  preys  like  a  parasite, 
a  thief,  on  the  health,  the  well-being,  the  happiness,  of  others, 
merely  for  the  gratification  of  his  own  desires. 

Right  means  life,  health,  happiness,  as  you  go  along. 
And  if  there  be,  as  I  firmly  believe,  another  career,  of  which 
death  is  the  gateway ;  and  if  we  enter  on  it  what  we  have 
made  ourselves  here  (for  every  thought,  impulse,  action, 
leaves  its  impress  upon  us), —  then  we  cripple  ourselves  — 
for  who  knows  how  many  ages  ?  Though  the  doom  of  salva- 
tion be  upon  us,  how  many  years  of  weary  struggle,  toil,  and 


n6  My  Creed 

climbing  may  be  needed  to  retrieve  a  fault, —  the  folly,  the 
blindness,  of  that  selfishness  which  in  this  world  we  thought 
would  bring  happiness  in  some  other  way  than  that  ordained 
by  the  very  conditions  of  our  natures  ?  The  result  of  our 
actions,  good  and  bad,  must  follow  us.  It  makes  us :  it 
makes  others.  And  it  is  ordained  forever  in  the  nature  of 
things  that  not  the  end  only,  but  the  way,  of  transgressors 
is  hard.  All  history  teaches  it.  It  is  ordained  that  not  the 
end  simply  of  the  path  of  right  and  wisdom  is  pleasantness 
and  peace  ;  but  the  way  of  Wisdom  as  we  go  along  is  blessed- 
ness, and  all  her  paths  are  peace. 


Communion  of  the  Finite  with  the  Infinite. 


IT  is  very  strange  the  way  people  sometimes  hear !  I  say, 
for  example,  I  do  not  believe  in  certain  ideas  concerning 
prayer,  and  go  on  to  explain,  as  clearly  as  I  know  how  with 
my  mastery  of  English,  precisely  what  I  mean.  But  it  is 
not  long  before  a  strange  and  curious  echo  comes  back  to 
me ;  and  I  hear  that  some  one  has  been  saying :  "  Why, 
what  an  irreligious  sort  of  man  this  is  !  He  does  not  be- 
lieve in  prayer  at  all." 

Again,  I  say  I  do  believe  in  certain  ideas  of  prayer ;  and 
once  more,  with  such  mastery  of  English  as  I  have,  I  ex- 
plain as  clearly  as  I  know  how,  precisely  what  I  mean. 
And  once  more  it  is  not  long  before  another  echo  comes 
back  to  me,  and  some  one  has  been  saying,  "  Why,  here  is 
a  man  who  claims  to  be  a  liberal,  who  claims  to  be  guided 
by  the  scientific  method  in  his  investigations  of  truth,  and 
yet  who  adopts  and  holds  and  practises  all  these  old, 
strange,  superstitious  notions  about  prayer!"  I  sometimes 
wish  that,  even  if  there  can  be  no  better  language  than 
English  to  speak  in,  there  might  be  a  clearer  one  for  people 
to  hear  in. 

I  propose  this  morning,  as  well  as  I  can  in  the  time  al- 
lowed me,  to  traverse  this  whole  great  subject  of  the  rela- 
tion between  the  finite  and  the  Infinite.  Of  course,  you  will 
see  that  I  cannot  possibly  find  time  to  demonstrate  each 


ii8  My  Creed 

position  that  I  take.  If  you  care  to  look  back  over  what 
I  have  said  in  years  gone  by,  you  will  find  a  good  many 
strong  reasons  given  already  for  some  of  the  things  that 
I  shall  say ;  and  you  will  give  me  credit,  I  trust,  for  think- 
ing, at  any  rate,  that  I  could  give  strong  reasons  for  all  that 
I  shall  say,  if  I  had  only  time.  I  shall  endeavor  to  say 
nothing  that  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  perfectly  consistent 
with  the  best  knowledge  as  well  as  the  noblest  instincts  and 
aspirations  of  the  world. 

I  do  not  believe  in  the  old,  common,  popular  ideas  about 
prayer  :  that  God  is  a  being  who  needs  to  be  teased  into 
giving  us  things ;  that  God  is  a  being  who  does  not  know 
what  we  want ;  that  God  is  a  being  who  might  possibly  for- 
get, if  we  did  not  remind  him ;  or  that  he  is  a  being  who 
has  any  favorite  at  court,  either  on  earth  or  in  heaven, 
through  whose  mediatorship  or  intercession  we  can  gain  one 
slightest  request  that  he  would  not  grant  us,  just  because  he 
is  God  and  we  are  his  needy  children.  I  do  not  believe 
that  he  is  a  being  who  interferes  with  his  own  working,  that 
he  unravels  with  one  hand  what  he  is  perpetually  weaving 
with  the  other.  I  do  not  believe  that  he  constantly  inter- 
feres with  nature,  working  a  perpetual  series  of  miracles. 
These  things  I  do  not  believe.  My  first  doubt,  my  first 
question,  concerning  this  whole  matter  of  prayer  and  com- 
munion between  the  finite  soul  and  the  Infinite,  sprang  out  of 
the  large  faith  and  trust  that  I  had  in  his  infinite  goodness. 
I  could  not  believe  that  he  was  a  being  who  needed  to  be 
approached  in  the  way  that  was  set  forth  and  illustrated  in 
the  ordinary  examples  with  which  I  was  familiar. 

To  illustrate  what  I  mean.  I  used  to  be  a  very  constant 
attendant  at  prayer-meeting,  even  before  it  became  my  duty 
to  take  charge  of  such  meetings  every  week  in  the  year. 
But  what  did  I  see  ?  Men  and  women,  simple  in  their  faith, 


Communion  of  the  Finite  with  the  Infinite       119 

earnest  and  true.  What  were  they  doing  ?  The  implica- 
tions of  their  attitude  toward  God  seemed  to  me  nothing  less 
than  impious.  They  begged,  they  prayed,  they  petitioned, 
even  with  tears ;  and  the  implication  of  it  all  the  time  was 
that,  if  only  they  could  become  earnest  enough,  sufficiently 
wrought  upon,  or  if  they  could  bring  to  bear  upon  God  suf- 
ficient power,  they  would  wake  him  up,  rouse  his  attention, 
start  his  inactivity,  get  him  to  do  something.  Men  prayed 
and  pleaded  for  their  children  as  though,  if  they  could  only 
make  God  understand  how  much  they  really  loved  them, 
he  would  hear.  Men  prayed  for  the  salvation  of  the  heathen 
as  though  God  had  forgotten  that  he  had  any  children  in 
India,  Africa,  and  the  islands  of  the  sea,  and  if  they  could 
only  make  him  remember  it,  and  only  prayed  hard  enough 
and  long  enough,  he  would  send  them  a  little  light ;  he  would 
find  some  way  by  which  at  least  a  few  of  these  millions  of 
souls,  that  were  pouring  like  a  Niagara  flood  over  into  the 
abyss,  might  be  saved,  evaporated  into  the  skies  to  shine  as 
a  part  of  his  rainbow  glory. 

Now  all  this  seems  to  me  distinctly  and  definitely  not 
pious.  Whether  I  am  right  or  wrong,  it  seems  impious.  T 
remember  when  this  feeling  first  swept  over  me  and  these 
thoughts  were  fresh  in  my  mind.  I  was  discussing  the  ques- 
tion with  a  lady,  a  member  of  my  church  in  the  West ;  and 
I  said  to  her :  "  Just  think  of  it !  What  would  you  say  if  I 
should  come  to  you  and  with  tears  plead,  beg,  entreat  you  to 
love  your  own  children  and  be  kind  to  them ;  not  to  let  them 
go  cold ;  not  to  let  them  go  hungry ;  to  teach  them,  so  that 
they  would  not  grow  up  ignorant, —  to  be,  in  short,  a  decent 
mother  to  those  you  love  as  you  love  your  own  life, —  what 
would  you  say  ?  Would  you  not  say  I  was  insulting  ? "  So 
this  kind  of  prayer  seems  to  me  little  else  than  insulting  to 
our  Father  who  is  in  heaven.  If  he  be  our  Father,  then  he 


I2O  My  Creed 

needs  not  that  kind  of  prayer.  If  he  be  not,  then  is  our 
breath  wasted,  as  if  blown  against  the  wind.  If  he  be  a  God 
who  could  be  thus  persuaded  into  doing  things  for  one  of 
his  children  that  he  is  not  inclined  to  do  for  another,  then  I, 
for  one,  would  not  ask  a  favor  at  his  hands,  nor  take  it,  were 
it  offered. 

There  was  another  difficulty  that  presented  itself  to  me. 
Not  only  God's  goodness  cried  out  against  that  kind  of  pray- 
ing, but  God's  wisdom  as  well.  It  seemed  to  me  so  egotis- 
tical that  we,  with  our  little,  short-sighted  wisdom,  should 
attempt  perpetual  dictation  as  to  how  the  affairs  of  this 
universe  should  be  carried  on.  Then,  not  only  the  absurdity 
of  the  prayers,  but  the  utter  impossibility  of  their  being 
answered, —  a  large  part  of  them, —  came  over  me.  Here, 
for  example,  is  a  man  who  has  a  farm  that  is  made  up  of 
sandy  soil  that  needs  a  great  deal  of  rain,  that  dries  up 
rapidly,  and  very  naturally  he  anxiously  desires  in  a  certain 
part  of  the  season  that  it  should  rain ;  and  he  prays  for  it. 
Another  man  in  the  same  town  has  a  farm  made  up  of  differ- 
ent soil,  low-lying,  wet  ground ;  and  what  he  needs  above  all 
is  sunshine.  Perhaps  the  man  with  the  dry  soil,  who  wants 
the  rain,  has  already  gathered  in  his  crop  of  hay ;  while  the 
other  man's  is  lying  out,  needing  to  be  dried  and  fitted  for 
the  barn.  Suppose  these  two  men  pray  for  what  they  want : 
can  Almighty  Power  work  a  contradiction,  and  have  a  rain- 
storm and  sunshine  and  dry  weather  at  the  same  time  ? 

Or  suppose  a  shipmaster  is  sailing  from  this  country 
towards  Europe,  and  wishes  a  wind  to  blow  him  on  his 
voyage.  Precisely  at  the  same  time,  a  man  is  sailing  from 
Europe  on  his  way  here,  and  wants  a  contrary  wind.  Both 
of  them  are  praying  men,  both  of  them  believe  that  God 
will  grant  the  things  that  they  desire ;  but  can  Omnipotence 
make  a  wind  blow  east  and  blow  west,  along  the  same  line, 
at  the  same  time  ? 


Communion  of  the  Finite  with  the  Infinite        12 1 

We  have  learned  in  this  modern  world  that  this  universe 
is  subject  to  law ;  but,  mark  you,  we  are  not  to  think  of  it 
as  a  mechanism,  a  machine  apart  from  God,  with  which  he 
might  interfere,  making  it  run  some  other  than  the  natural 
way.  Neither  are  we  to  think  of  it  as  a  mechanism  so 
mighty  and  so  vast  that  God  cannot  interfere  with  it.  We 
who  talk  about  the  regularity  and  order  of  natural  force  are 
perpetually  being  misrepresented  in  this.  People  say  that 
we  hold  the  position  that  nature  is  a  mechanism  so  hard  and 
fast,  so  fixed,  that  God  cannot  interfere  with  its  working; 
that,  if  there  be  a  God,  he  has  constructed  a  machine  that 
is  mightier  than  he  is.  Of  course,  that  is  nonsense;  but 
what  we  do  hold  is  this :  that  the  on-going  of  this  natural 
force  is  the  very  presence  and  manifest  power  and  working 
of  God. 

I  remember,  some  years  ago,  hearing  one  very  strong  ar- 
gument, or  that  was  intended  to  be  very  strong,  in  favor  of 
God's  being  able  to  answer  prayer  without  working  a  miracle. 
It  was  brought  out  at  length  and  illustrated  by  Dr.  Mark 
Hopkins,  then  President  01  Williams  College,  a  noble  man 
and  famous  scholar.  He  started  with  this  idea,  which  is 
familiar  to  all  of  us,  that  we  are  capable  of  interfering  with 
the  order  of  nature.  Men,  we  know,  divert  the  course  of  a 
stream,  making  it  run  in  another  channel,  and  do  not  break 
any  natural  law  in  so  doing.  We  can  develop  and  apply 
the  force  of  electricity ;  but  we  do  not  break  any  natural  law 
in  so  doing.  We  simply  avail  ourselves  of  our  knowledge 
of  natural  law  so  as  to  produce  results  which  nature,  not 
thus  interfered  with  by  the  intelligence  of  man,  would  never 
produce.  Dr.  Hopkins  argues,  if  we  are  able  to  do  this, 
surely  God  ought  to  be  able  to  do  it.  He  might  be  able  to 
work  upon  these  natural  forces  about  us  in  such  a  way  as 
to  produce  the  answer  to  our  prayer,  not  by  any  interference 


122  My  Creed 

with  natural  law,  but  simply  by  the  use  of  this  natural  force. 
This  would  be  a  conclusive  answer  to  the  objection,  were  it 
not  that  the  most  important  thing  in  the  whole  discussion 
has  been  overlooked.  If  God  were  a  being  outside  of  and 
separate  from  these  natural  forces,  as  we  are,  then  we  might 
think  of  him  as  working  upon  them  as  we  can  and  producing 
results  that  would  not  otherwise  be  produced.  But,  when  we 
remember  that  these  natural  forces  that  make  up  what  we 
call  the  mechanism  of  the  universe  are  the  very  presence 
and  power  and  working  of  God,  then  you  see  the  comparison 
that  was  attempted  to  be  drawn  between  our  interference 
and  his  interference  fails,  and  becomes  of  no  avail.  These 
natural  forces  are  the  manifest  presence,  the  vital,  throbbing, 
thrilling,  pulsing  life  of  God.  And  can  he  interfere  with 
himself,  or  will  he  be  likely  to  ?  If  he  does  a  certain  thing 
under  certain  conditions,  he  does  it  because  that  is  the  best 
and  the  wisest  thing  under  those  conditions.  And  the  next 
time,  when  precisely  the  same  conditions  exist,  he  will  do 
precisely  the  same,  because  he  did  the  best  thing  the  first 
time ;  and  he  cannot  do  a  different  thing  without  doing  some- 
thing which  is  not  the  best.  It  is  then  in  the  wisdom  and 
the  love  of  God  that  we  find  the  basis  for  the  universal  un- 
changeableness  of  what  we  call  natural  law.  It  is  perfectly 
easy  for  us  to  see  that,  if  it  were  not  for  this  uniformity,  we 
would  be  disturbed  in  our  calculations,  upset  in  all  our 
arrangements  at  every  turn.  Knowledge  would  be  impos- 
sible, forethought  as  to  to-morrow  or  next  week  would  be  out 
of  the  question.  It  is  only  because  we  can  count  on  water's 
freezing  under  similar  conditions  every  time,  on  iron's  melt- 
ing under  certain  conditions  every  time,  on  the  absolute, 
perfect  uniformity  of  nature,  that  it  is  possible  for  us  to 
know  anything,  that  it  is  possible  for  us  to  build  up  our 
grand  civilization.  This  is  not  only  the  foundation  of  our 


Communion  of  the  Finite  witJi  the  Infinite       123 

trust  in  God,  but  the  foundation  of  science,  of  all  the  ma- 
terial enterprises  of  the  world.  They  are  all  based  on 
this  fact, —  that  God  is  without  variableness  or  shadow  of 
turning. 

Passing  from  this  division  of  my  theme,  I  wish  to  indicate 
to  you  a  few  reasons  why  I  believe  it  is  possible  that  there 
should  be  something  even  better  than  this  old  idea  of  beg- 
ging for  things,  in  the  relations  which  exist  between  us 
and  God. 

I  believe  in  prayer.  Of  course  I  believe  in  prayer.  I  think 
no  sane  man,  who  understands  the  meaning  of  the  word  and 
who  considers  carefully  what  he  is  talking  about,  can  fail  to 
say  the  same.  I  believe  in  prayer  for  two  great  reasons. 
First,  I  believe  in  God.  I  believe  that  we  are  in  the  pres- 
ence of  an  infinite,  eternal,  wise,  loving  Power.  I  believe 
that  we  are  his  children.  I  believe  that  you  will  all  accept 
the  fact,  the  moment  it  is  stated,  that  the  very  definition  of 
prayer  shows  that  all  of  us  pray,  whether  we  think  of  it  or 
not ;  and  we  could  not  help  it  if  we  tried. 

What  do  we  mean  ordinarily  by  the  word  "  prayer  "  ?  We 
mean  either  writing  or  uttering  a  wish  for  something,  directed, 
when  we  use  the  word  "prayer,"  toward  the  universe,  toward 
God,  the  spirit  and  life  of  things.  Of  course,  you  know  that 
writing  down  a  prayer  or  speaking  it  is  no  necessary  part 
of  it.  When  you  analyze  it,  it  is  the  wish,  the  desire  for 
something,  that  is  the  essence  of  all  prayer ;  and  though 
your  wish  go  out  towards  a  fellow-man,  or  though  it  go  out, 
so  far  as  you  are  conscious,  only  into  empty  space,  precisely 
as  much  as  though  you  consciously  asked  of  God  for  some- 
thing, you  know  that  every  wish  that  is  ever  fulfilled  finds 
its  source  of  fulfilment  in  the  ultimate  Power  and  Life 
that  I  am  speaking  of  when  I  say  God.  Whatever  little 
brook  you  dip  your  cup  into,  that  brook  itself,  no  matter 


124  My  Creed 

what  we  name  it,  is  fed  from  the  far-off,  infinite  springs. 
Whatever  carrier  brings  the  thing  you  desire,  it  has  its 
source  in  this  same  far-off,  infinite  spring  of  life  and  power. 
Every  good  gift  and  every  perfect  gift  —  every  gift — ulti- 
mately cometh  from  the  Father  of  Light.  And  every  wish 
that  seeks  fulfilment,  in  spite  of  you  even,  is  a  prayer ;  and 
the  answer  comes  from  the  one  source  from  which  comes 
the  fulfilment  of  every  desire.  So  you  pray,  and  you  can- 
not help  praying. 

But  now  I  wish  to  speak  of  this  in  another  and  deeper 
way.  I  want  you  to  feel  with  me,  if  possible,  the  reality  of 
something  in  the  nature  of  conscious  communication  be- 
tween your  soul  and  the  Infinite  Soul.  Can  we  find  any 
hint  or  glimpse  of  the  basis  for  so  sublime  and  grand  a 
thing  as  this  ? 

Let  us  look  around  us :  what  do  we  see?  Whatever  your 
theory  of  this  universe  may  be,  we  know  that  it  is  one  life 
and  one  power  which  is  at  the  heart  of  all  this  infinite 
variety  of  manifestation.  You  may  think  of  that  Power  as 
conscious  or  unconscious,  good  or  bad.  So  far  as  the  pur- 
pose of  my  argument  is  concerned,  it  makes  no  difference. 
There  is  one  power,  one  infinite  energy,  at  the  heart  of 
things,  that  is  the  source  of  all  things.  And  this  infinite 
energy  is  your  father  and  your  mother,  my  father  and  my 
mother.  No  matter  by  what  process,  the  creative  or  the 
Darwinian  ;  no  matter  whether  born  within  a  week  or  fifty 
years  ago;  no  matter  whether  you  trace  your  ancestry 
through  six  thousand  years  of  human  history  or  six  million 
years;  no  matter  what  the  mediate  process  maybe, — you  are 
a  child  of  this  Infinite  Life.  You  have  come  out  of  it;  and  it 
has  stamped  your  life  with  every  feature  which  constitutes 
you  what  you  are. 

What  then  ?     We  look  at  this  universe,  and  try  to  unravel 


Communion  of  the  Finite  ^vith  the  Infinite        125 

this  infinite  mystery.  We  look  at  ourselves,  and  try  to 
determine  just  what  we  are.  Mystery  still,  both  concerning 
God  and  man,  and  as  much  mystery  about  man  as  about 
God.  Though  you  may  think  you  know  yourself  or  the 
person  that  sits  next  you  this  morning,  you  know  God 
just  as  thoroughly  and  deeply  as  you  know  your  next-door 
neighbor.  But  one  thing  is  certain ;  and,  that  you  may 
know  I  am  not  giving  you  only  my  own  authority,  I  wish  to 
quote  a  sentence  or  two  bearing  on  these  ideas.  This  is 
the  final  outcome,  so  far  as  the  world's  thought  has  gone, 
concerning  this  great  mystery,  if  Herbert  Spencer  may  be 
considered  competent  to  speak  for  the  ultimate  result  of 
scientific  investigation.  This  is  what  he  says :  "  Amid  the 
mysteries  which  become  the  more  mysterious  the  more  they 
are  thought  about,  there  will  remain  the  one  absolute  cer- 
tainty that  he  [that  is,  each  one  of  us]  is  ever  in  the 
presence  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy,  from  which  all 
things  proceed." 

And  what  of  this  Eternal  Energy  ?  What  of  its  nature  ? 
The  same  authority  pronounces  this  verdict :  "  The  final  out- 
come of  that  speculation  commenced  by  the  primitive  man 
is  that  the  power  manifested  throughout  the  universe  dis- 
tinguished as  material  is  the  same  power  which  in  ourselves 
wells  up  under  the  form  of  consciousness." 

That  is,  the  final  outcome,  so  far,  of  the  profoundest,  the 
deepest  and  most  scientific  study  of  the  world,  is  the  asser- 
tion of  identity  between  the  spirit  and  life  of  the  universe 
and  our  spirit  and  life.  And,  if  you  cannot  conceive,  can- 
not picture  to  yourself  God,  or  tell  where  he  resides  or  what 
may  be  his  form,  can  you  picture  your  own  thinking  mind? 
Can  you  locate  thought,  can  you  outline  it  ?  Can  you  tell 
in  what  part  of  the  body  it  inheres  ?  And  yet  that  we  do 
think  and  feel  and  know  is  the  one  thing  most  certain  of 


126  My  Creed 

all.  I  believe,  with  the  old  seers  and  poets  of  all  time, 
that  there  is  a  life,  a  spirit,  a  presence  in  things  outside  of 
us,  that  answers  to  our  life,  our  spirit,  our  presence,  our 
thought,  our  feeling.  In  the  childhood  of  the  world,  they 
broke  this  one  spirit  up  into  a  multitude,  placing  a  spirit  in 
each  tree,  in  the  brook,  in  the  wind,  in  the  air,  in  the  clouds. 
I  think  their  only  error  was  in  this  multiplicity  of  concep- 
tion, not  in  the  ultimate  thought  itself.  I  believe  there  is 
not  a  spirit  in  the  tree  and  in  the  brook  and  in  the  cloud 
and  the  wind  and  the  air,  but  that  there  is  spirit,  life,  in  all 
these, —  the  one  spirit  and  life  in  all,  of  which  the  old  psalm- 
ist sang,  as  he  pictured  the  impossibility  of  our  escaping  the 
universal  presence.  Is  it  mere  poetry  when  Byron  sings, — 

"  There  is  a  pleasure  in  the  pathless  woods, 
There  is  a  rapture  on  the  lonely  shore, 
There  is  society,  where  none  intrudes, 
By  the  deep  Sea,  and  music  in  its  roar : 
I  love  not  Man  the  less,  but  Nature  more, 
From  these  our  interviews,  in  which  I  steal, 
From  all  I  may  be  or  have  been  before, 
To  mingle  with  the  Universe,  and  feel 
What  I  can  ne'er  express,  yet  cannot  all  conceal "  ? 

Is    it  only  poetry,  again,  when  Wordsworth   sings   those 
words,  fine  as  any  poet  ever  uttered, — 

"  And  I  have  felt 

A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts :  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  : 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things  "  ? 


Communion  of  the  Finite  witJi  the  Infinite        127 

Is  this  only  poetry  ?  I  believe  that  these  poets  are  singing 
the  same  grand  truth  that  Jesus  uttered  when  he  said,  "  I 
am  not  alone,  but  I  and  the  Father  who  sent  me." 

If  we  study  scientifically,  deeply,  philosophically,  we  find 
this  to  be  true.  This  universe  has  produced  us ;  and  it  calls 
out  in  us  each  one  of  our  faculties,  and  matches  us  at  every 
point.  Wherever  we  study,  we  find  a  perfect  intellectual 
order  matching  our  intellect,  only  surpassing  it  on  every 
hand.  Wherever  we  study,  we  find  a  beauty  challenging 
our  sense  of  beauty,  developing  it,  matching  it  at  every  point, 
only  transcending  it  beyond  the  reach  of  our  grandest  fancy. 
We  find  in  the  mountain,  in  the  sea,  in  the  stars  at  night,  a 
sublimity  calling  out  in  us  the  sense  of  the  sublime.  Did 
we  put  it  there  ?  I  do  not  believe  it.  It  is  only  the  reflec- 
tion of  the  infinite  sublimity  challenging  our  finite  sense 
of  the  sublime,  and  lifting  us  into  some  little  conception 
of  itself.  So,  whichever  way  you  turn,  whatever  faculties  of 
men  you  speak  of,  you  shall  find  something  outside  of  men 
calling  to  that  which  has  its  fellow  in  men,  echoing  it,  an- 
swering back  again,  and  ever  lifting  it  to  some  higher  level 
of  thought,  some  grander  reach  of  imagination. 

Here,  then,  in  this  likeness  between  the  finite  spirit  and 
the  Infinite,  in  the  fact  that  it  is  our  Father  and  Mother, 
and  we  are  children  in  its  presence, —  here  is  ground  for 
this  communion  grander  than  mere  begging  for  things, — 
ground  for  prayer  nobler  than  that  which  narrows  itself 
down  to  petty  petition.  When  we  are  grown  up  to  spiritual 
manhood  and  womanhood,  and  have  this  sense  of  fellow- 
ship, kinship,  communion,  with  our  Father  in  heaven,  is  it 
not  something  better  than  the  old,  petty,  child-world,  bar- 
baric idea  ?  It  was  easy  for  men  to  believe  in  those  old 
times  in  that  mode  of  prayer.  Their  god  was  only  a  dead 
chief,  perchance,  with  the  same  limitations  and  passions  that 


128  My  Creed 

he  had  when  living,  only  become  somewhat  grander  and 
stronger,  surrounded  with  awe  because  invisible  and  un- 
known. It  was  easy  to  believe  that  he  might  forget ;  that 
he  might,  as  Elijah  taunted  the  priests  of  Baal,  be  asleep  ; 
that  he  might  need  urging ;  that  he  might  have  some  court 
favorite,  whose  interest,  if  it  could  be  obtained,  might  get 
something  done.  Do  you  not  see  how  the  whole  idea  under- 
lying this  old  method  of  petition  springs  from  the  frayed-out 
remnant  of  the  notion  that  God  is  a  kind  of  sultan,  who 
has  his  vizier, —  his  favorite  ?  The  sultan  himself  is  se- 
cluded and  hard  to  get  at;  but,  if  you  can  only  get  some 
one  to  approach  the  vizier,  interest  him  in  the  matter,  why, 
then  he  will  approach  the  sultan,  who  will  do  it  for  the  sake 
of  the  favorite.  He  will  not  do  it  simply  because  it  ought 
to  be  done.  Do  you  not  see  how  this  sense  of  fellowship  is 
something  grander  than  that  ?  When  a  boy  grows  up  and 
becomes  a  young  man,  he  begins  to  have  a  sense  of  fellow- 
ship with  his  father.  He  does  not  tease  him  now,  like  a 
little  child,  for  things  that  he  wants.  He  begins  to  trust  his 
father,  his  older  experience,  his  knowledge  of  the  world, — 
begins  to  take  comfort  in  his  presence  and  in  talking  things 
over  with  him,  to  understand  that  his  father  is  watching 
over  his  life,  thinking  of  him  all  the  time,  glad  to  do  every- 
thing he  can  for  him,  and  wishing  even  that  he  might  do 
more.  He  knows  that  he  does  not  forget,  that  he  does  not 
overlook  these  things.  He  enjoys  this  communion ;  and 
does  he  not  feel  that  it  is  a  nobler,  a  more  satisfying  thing 
than  was  that  merely  childish  relation,  when  he  used  to 
tease  and  tease  until  the  father,  merely  to  get  rid  of  him, 
would  buy  the  tin  rattle  for  the  boy  ?  And  is  not  this  a 
nobler  thought  of  the  Infinite  ?  Is  not  this  a  nobler  thought 
of  communion  between  the  child  and  the  father  than  the 
other? 


Communion  of  the  Finite  with  the  Infinite        129 

What,  then,  do  I  believe  that  is  practical  concerning 
prayer  to-day  ?  What  satisfaction  do  I  find  in  this  sense  of 
communion  with  God  ? 

Let  me  give  you  two  or  three  hints.  In  the  first  place,  it 
is  infinite,  unspeakable  comfort  and  help  to  me  to  believe,  as 
I  do  with  my  whole  soul,  that,  though  I  am  on  a  ship  out  at 
sea,  though  I  do  not  know  what  port  the  ship  sailed  from, 
though  I  do  not  know  definitely  what  harbor  it  will  finally 
reach,  still  there  is  One  at  the  helm  that  does  know,  and  that 
he  is  a  friend,  that  I  can  trust  him,  that  I  can  rest  in  him ; 
and  that,  even  if  there  are  head-winds  and  storms,  or  if  we 
are  off  the  course  that  I  think  the  ship  ought  to  be  sailing 
in,  still  there  is  a  Power  and  Wisdom  that  knows  more  about 
it  than  I  do,  and  that  is  the  Master  of  every  wind  and 
storm  that  ever  blew.  It  is  a  great  comfort  to  me  to  know, 
to  trust,  as  the  poet  says,  that, 

"If  my  bark  sink,  'tis  to  another  sea." 

It  is  a  great  comfort  to  me,  again,  to  know  that  there  is 
somebody  in  the  universe  who  understands  better  what  my 
life  means,  and  what  its  purposes  should  be,  than  I  do ; 
that  there  is  One  who  has  in  his  hand  all  the  great  causes, 
and  that  I  cannot  possibly  fail ;  that  disaster  cannot  over- 
take me,  if  only  I  link  my  failure  or  my  success  with  these 
eternal  causes  of  God.  I  wish  to  read  you,  from  the  poet 
Arthur  Hugh  Clough,  six  lines  expressing  this  faith,  that 
seem  to  have  more  of  the  spirit  of  prayer  and  communion  in 
them  than  volumes  of  so-called  prayers  and  works  of  devo- 
tion : — 

"  It  fortifies  my  soul  to  know 

That,  though  I  perish,  Truth  is  so ; 

That  howsoe'er  I  stray  and  range, 

Whate'er  I  do,  thou  dost  not  change. 

I  steadier  step  when  I  recall 

That,  if  I  slip,  thou  dost  not  fall." 


130  My  Creed 

This  is  confidence  that  all  the  great  interests  of  the  world 
are  in  the  hands  of  an  Infinite  Power,  an  Infinite  Wisdom, 
and  an  Infinite  Love;  and  that,  whatever  becomes  of  my 
petty  skirmish  or  battle,  whether  I  am  defeated  or  win,  so 
long  as  I  link  myself  with  God,  I  must  come  in  one  of  the 
victors  at  the  end. 

How  shall  I  pray  ?  Shall  I  measure  my  words,  lest  I  say 
something  that  I  cannot  logically  defend  ?  Is  it  not  wiser 
simply  to  put  ourselves  in  the  attitude  of  childhood  towards 
fatherhood  ?  I  come  into  the  presence  of  my  Father ;  and 
it  is  a  relief  to  pour  out  my  whole  heart  to  him.  I  know  he 
understands,  no  matter  how  poor  the  utterance.  I  pour  it 
out,  not  because  he  needs  it,  but  because  I  need  the  relief  of 
throwing  off  my  burden  and  finding  a  place  of  rest.  Sup- 
pose I  do  ask  for  something  not  wise  :  I  not  only  know,  but 
am  glad  to  know,  that  he  will  refuse  me.  Suppose  I  do  ask 
for  something  contrary  to  his  natural  laws  :  I  am  only  pour- 
ing out  the  wishes  and  hopes  and  fears  and  emotions  of  my 
soul.  I  do  not  expect  him  to  change  his  natural  laws.  If  I 
did,  if  I  thought  I  could  interfere,  I  would  never  open  my 
lips  until  my  dying  day :  I  would  not  dare  to  pray.  It  is 
only  this  confidence  that  I  cannot  that  makes  me  free  to  tell 
him  all  I  think  and  wish  and  hope  and  fear. 

Then  it  is  such  a  consolation  and  peace  to  me  to  know 
that  there  is  one  in  the  universe  who  understands  me,  one 
who  never  misconceives  my  purposes ;  one  who  knows  all 
my  weaknesses,  every  folly  and  foible  in  my  nature ;  who 
understands  that  I  am  dust,  but  who  loves  me  in  spite  of  it, 
just  as  I  love  an  imperfect  child ;  one  to  whom  I  need  not 
make  any  explanation,  to  whom  I  can  just  open  my  heart 
and  soul,  and  rest,  knowing  that  he  comprehends  it  all. 

Is  there  nothing  of  practical  strength,  of  practical  help 
and  power  in  prayer  and  communion  like  this  ?  It  seems  to 
me  that  here  is  all  power,  all  rest,  all  peace. 


Communion  of  the  Finite  with  the  Infinite        131 

I  will  end  with  those  grand  words  which  close  the  for- 
tieth chapter  of  the  prophecy  of  Isaiah.  You  will  see  that 
they  sum  up  in  their  magnificent  imagery  the  practical  reali- 
zation of  rest,  strength,  and  help  that  we  may  gain  by 
simple  personal  communion  with  God :  — 

"  Hast  thou  not  known,  hast  thou  not  heard,  that  the  ever- 
lasting God,  the  Lord,  the  Creator  of  the  ends  of  the  earth, 
fainteth  not,  neither  is  weary  ?  There  is  no  searching  of  his 
understanding.  He  giveth  power  to  the  faint ;  and  to  them 
that  have  no  might  he  increaseth  strength.  Even  the  youths 
shall  faint  and  be  weary,  and  the  young  men  shall  utterly 
fall :  but  they  that  wait  upon  the  Lord  shall  renew  their 
strength ;  they  shall  mount  up  with  wings  as  eagles ;  they 
shall  run,  and  not  be  weary ;  and  they  shall  walk,  and  not 
faint." 


THE  CHURCH. 


WHATEVER  may  be  our  theories  concerning  its  origin,  its 
nature,  its  effects,  either  for  good  or  for  evil,  there  can  be 
no  question  in  the  mind  of  the  careful  student  of  human 
history  that  religion  has  been  the  mightiest  force  that  has 
ever  moved  the  world.  There  is  no  such  passion,  no  such 
enthusiasm,  no  such  enduring  earnestness,  on  any  other 
namable  theme,  as  there  has  been  in  all  the  ages  gathered 
round  this  one  question  of  religious  thought  and  life.  Re- 
ligion has  been  mightier  than  kings ;  for  it  has  set  kings  on 
their  thrones,  placed  crowns  upon  their  brows,  and  then,  in 
spite  of  their  prestige,  in  spite  of  their  arms,  in  spite  even 
of  that  "  divinity  that  doth  hedge  a  king,"  religion  has  been 
mighty  enough  to  pluck  those  crowns  from  their  foreheads, 
cast  them  into  the  dust,  and  overthrow  their  thrones.  Re- 
ligion has  been  mightier  than  race  hatred ;  for  it  has  bound 
together  peoples  naturally  antagonistic  on  every  other 
ground.  It  has  been  mightier  than  the  potency  of  blood 
and  common  interests  that  tend  to  bind  people  together; 
for  it  has  rent  kingdoms  asunder,  and  created  civil  strifes 
bitterer  than  those  that  can  trace  their  origin  to  any  other 
source.  Religion  has  been  mightier  than  the  love  that  binds 
husband  to  wife ;  for  it  has  forbidden  the  bans  at  the  altar, 
and  torn  apart  those  who  had  plighted  their  mutual  troth. 
Religion  has  been  even  deeper  in  its  reach,  higher,  stronger 
than  the  mightiest  mother  love :  for  it  has  put  bitterness 


The  Church  133 

between  mother  and  son ;  it  has  led  the  mother  to  offer  to 
some  divinity  the  child  torn  from  her  own  bosom;  it  has 
made  mothers  willing  coolly  to  contemplate  the  possibility 
of  sitting  in  heaven  and  seeing  their  dearest,  if  it  be  God's 
will,  consumed  in  everlasting  flames.  Religion,  then,  has 
been,  in  whatever  direction  you  choose  to  study  it,  the 
mightiest  force  in  all  the  world.  Is  it  not  natural,  then,  that 
this  universal,  world-wide,  age-long  enthusiasm  should  have 
organized  itself,  and  have  made  itself  mighty  through  this 
organization  ?  Any  passion,  any  power,  that  grasps  us  with 
a  firm  hold,  and  that  grasps  the  thought  and  the  interest  and 
the  feeling  of  large  numbers  of  people  at  the  same  time, 
naturally  crystallizes  into  organization.  And  so  the  Church 
is  just  as  inevitable  as  a  society  for  the  advancement  of  sci- 
ence, as  an  art  association,  as  government,  as  education,  as 
any  other  of  the  great  common  interests  of  the  world. 

I  need  not  spend  time,  this  morning,  in  going  back  of  the 
one  great  religious  organization  which  preceded  our  modern 
Protestantism  in  Christendom.  You  are  aware,  if  you  have 
studied  it  at  all,  that  Jesus  wrote  nothing,  organized  nothing. 
There  was,  at  the  time  when  he  was  born,  a  great  seething 
conjunction  of  interests, —  political,  social,  religious, —  such 
as  the  world  had  never  seen.  Asia,  Europe,  east  and  west, 
the  whole  world,  so  far  as  it  was  even  partially  civilized  or 
had  any  intercourse  or  any  common  interests,  was  in  a  con- 
dition of  unrest.  The  old  had  become  antiquated,  recog- 
nized as  such,  and  was  losing  its  hold  on  the  thought  and 
enthusiasm  of  men,  and  was  passing  away.  There  was  uni- 
versal expectation  of  some  new  birth, —  political,  social,  relig- 
ious,—  something  that  should  touch  the  peoples  and  take  the 
place  of  that  which  was  crumbling  away  and  ceasing  to 
hold  this  power  over  the  imagination,  thought,  and  affection 
of  men. 


134  My  Creed 


What  did  Jesus  do  to  help  on  that  which  came  to  be  after 
his  death  ?  As  I  have  said,  he  wrote  nothing,  he  systema- 
tized nothing,  he  organized  nothing.  Sometimes  a  chemist, 
in  preparing  the  ingredients  of  that  which  is  to  be  a  crystal, 
puts  this  and  that  thing  in  solution  ;  but  these  different 
elements  lack  the  one  thing  which  possesses  the  power  to 
precipitate  the  whole  mass,  and  set  at  active  work  those 
forces  which  are  to  obey  the  mysterious  law  that  is  to  result 
in  this  wondrous  work  of  crystallization.  When  that  one 
thing  is  .dropped  in  the  result  is  inevitable.  So  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  life  and  teaching  and  spirit  of  Jesus  wrought 
upon  these  great,  world-wide  elements  ;  and,  as  the  natural 
result  of  what  he  was,  what  he  said,  what  he  did,  there  came 
to  pass  an  organization  which  probably  Jesus  himself  did 
not  anticipate,  perhaps  never  dreamed  of.  It  seems  to  me 
very  plain  to  one  who  carefully  studies  the  gospels  of  the 
New  Testament  that  Jesus  had  no  idea  of  any  such  human 
future  as  that  which  history  has  unrolled  from  his  day  to  our 
own.  He  expected  a  miraculous  eruption  of  divine  force 
from  the  clouds  to  supersede  the  natural  order,  and  set  up 
a  kingdom  of  God  here  on  earth  or  somewhere  in  the 
heavens.  Jesus,  then,  is  not  responsible  directly  for  this 
great  organization  which  came  to  be  called  the  Catholic 
Church.  But,  when  we  study  that  Catholic  Church,  if  we 
compare  it  with  any  other  religious  movement  of  men,  we 
are  simply  amazed  at  its  scope,  its  range,  its  universal 
power,  its  magnificence.  It  seems  to  me  the  most  marvel- 
lous achievement  of  man,  simply  for  the  grandeur  of  its 
organization,  for  the  power  with  which  it  has  played  on  the 
hopes,  the  fears,  the  imaginations,  the  reverence,  the  thoughts 
of  men.  It  has,  as  no  other  organization  has  ever  succeeded 
in  doing,  found  a  place  to  work  for  every  man  and  every 
woman,  rich  or  poor,  learned  or  ignorant,  high  or  low.  This 


The  Church  135 

must  have  been  so,  since  it  believed  itself  divine,  inspired  to 
make  itself  an  organized  world.  Nothing  less  than  this  did 
it  anticipate,  nothing  less  than  this  did  it  strive  to  become. 

I  wish  to  note  a  few  of  the  things  for  which  the  Church 
claimed  to  stand  in  those  days  of  its  glory ;  and  then  I  wish 
to  note  some  few  changes  that  have  passed  over  human 
thought,  and  recognize  where  we  are,  what  attitude  we  hold 
towards  it,  and  see  if  there  is  still  place  for  the  Church  in  the 
world,  so  that  it  appeals  to  you,—  to  liberal,  enfranchised, 
earnest,  business  men. 

The  Church  believed  originally,  and  it  was  quite  natural 
under  the  circumstances  that  it  should,  that  it  had  authority 
to  utter  the  very  voice  of  God.  It  was  God  through  his 
recognized  agency  permanently  abiding  here  on  earth,  speak- 
ing to,  leading,  commanding,  guiding,  mankind.  The 
Church  believed  that  it  possessed  certain  supernatural 
sources  of  knowledge,  that  it  held  the  secrets  of  God  in  its 
keeping.  It  knew  when  the  worlds  were  formed  and  how 
they  were  created.  It  knew  the  origin  and  the  end  of  man. 
It  knew  God's  purpose  in  humanity.  It  knew  the  secrets  of 
the  Divine,  and  what  he  meant  in  all  this  maze  of  human 
affairs.  It  knew  what  was  to  be  the  outcome.  It  claimed, 
at  least,  to  have  some  secret  exclusive  means  through  which 
it  listened  and  heard  whispered  the  very  counsels  of  the 
Infinite.  At  that  time,  this  Church  touched  men,  women, 
and  children  in  their  most  vital  interests, —  touched  them  in 
every  phase  of  their  lives.  The  baby,  as  soon  as  born,  was 
received  into  the  hands  of  the  priest  for  his  consecration; 
and  all  the  way  through  till  the  priest  touched  his  forehead 
with  the  divine  chrism  of  extreme  unction,  and  dismissed  the 
soul  Godward,  the  Church  held  this  life  in  its  hands.  Every 
business  interest,  all  agriculture,  art,  science,  no  matter  what, 
the  Church  touched,  shaped,  held,  guided  all.  From  morn- 


136  My  Creed 

ing  till  night,  sleeping  or  waking,  until  this  temporary  sleep 
ended  in  the  last  sleep  of  death,  the  Church,  blessing  or 
banning,  guiding  or  hindering,  lifting  up  or  casting  down, 
touched  every  human  soul. 

Again,  all  the  forms  of  human  thought  were  under  the 
exclusive  control  of  the  Church.  Science  studied  only  as 
the  minister  of  the  Church,  dared  only  to  utter  what  the 
Church  permitted,  dared  to  see  only  through  the  atmosphere 
of  the  Church,  dared  to  construct  only  such  a  universe  as 
the  Church  had  authoritatively  declared  to  be  the  ideal  of 
that  which  was  the  work  of  the  Almighty.  Art  wrought  only 
for  the  Church.  The  first  great  pictures  were  painted  by 
monks  in  their  cloisters.  They  went  to  the  work  of  the 
brush  with  the  same  devout  spirit,  the  same  tender  rever- 
ence, the  same  exclusive  devotion,  with  which  they  went  to 
their  vespers  and  their  matins  or  with  which  they  ministered 
by  the  bedside  of  the  sick  or  dying.  Art  was  only  a  form  of 
ecclesiastical  consecration.  Imagination  dared  not  fly  off 
on  ventures  or  pathways  of  her  own.  Only  within  the  re- 
gions of  church  life  and  church  tradition  could  it  take  its 
flight.  Those  things  only  were  pictured  which  could  kindle 
the  devout  aspirations  and  fire  the  heart  to  worship.  Music, 
too,  was  no  independent  art  or  science.  It,  again,  was  only 
a  servant  of  the  Church.  The  songs  that  it  heard  and  wrote 
down  for  the  use  of  the  choristers  of  the  time  were  only 
songs  of  worship,  echoes  of  that  kind  of  praise  which  with 
their  spiritual  ear  they  heard  sung  round  the  throne  of  the 
Most  High.  Literature,  too, — such  literature  as  there  was, 
—  was  only  a  servant  of  the  Church.  The  nearest  approach 
to  the  novel  was  the  telling  of  the  stories  of  ecclesiastical 
tradition,  the  legends  of  the  saints.  The  nearest  approach 
to  the  drama  was  the  miracle  play,  which  set  forth  some 
Scripture  story  in  such  fashion  as  to  impress  the  rude  and 


The  Church  137 

ignorant  imagination  of  the  populace  of  the  time.  So  every 
department  of  human  thought  and  life  was  then  under  the 
control  and  dictation  of  the  Church.  The  Church  held 
them  all  in  her  hand,  made  them  serve  her  one  world-wide 
and  eternal  aim. 

The  Church,  at  this  time,  stood  in  some  rude  but  grand 
and  real  fashion  for  the  democratic  ideal,  for  the  rights  of 
man  as  man.  This  is  something  that,  in  summing  up  the 
record  of  the  Church,  we  ought  to  take  account  of  and  give 
her  credit  for,  no  matter  what  her  attitude  may  be  to-day. 
The  Church,  throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  in  some  real 
noble  fashion,  did  stand  for  manhood.  The  cardinal's  cap 
might  be  worn  by  the  butcher's  son,  the  pope's  tiara  might 
crown  the  brow  of  the  common  peasant,  and  these  men  were 
mightier  than  nobles,  and  he  who  wielded  the  papal  power 
could  be  served  by  the  loftiest  and  most  magnificent  kings, 
without  the  king's  feeling  the  slightest  sense  of  humiliation  ; 
for  here  was  God  present,  incarnated  almost  for  the  time,  in 
this  humanity,  no  matter  what  its  origin.  Here,  by  God's 
authority,  was  one  lifted  up  to  power ;  and  the  distinctions 
of  high  and  low  vanish,  as  the  little  hills  and  valleys  are 
as  nothing  to  one  who  surveys  them  from  the  lofty  peak  of 
some  high  mountain.  Here  was  the  voice  of  authority  that 
spoke  for  that  which  was  essential  in  man  and  woman,  with- 
out any  regard  to  social  or  political  distinctions  of  high 
or  low. 

The  Church  had  her  sacraments  that  possessed  the  mirac- 
ulous power  of  conferring  the  gift  of  eternal  life  on  those 
who,  by  means  of  these  sacraments,  became  a  part  of  this 
body  of  Christ  on  earth.  It  was  by  the  sacraments  that  men 
and  women  and  children  came  to  link  themselves  vitally 
with  this  common  life  of  the  Divine ;  and  the  Church's 
priests  had  power  to  bind  or  loose,  not  only  on  earth,  but 


138  My  Creed 

in  heaven  as  well.  This  Church,  at  least,  had  the  authoritj', 
as  all  men  believed  then,  in  the  case  of  any  individual,  be 
he  peasant  or  king,  to  say  whether,  when  his  poor  soul,  di- 
vested of  its  mortal  raiment, —  the  conditions  which  made  it 
high  or  low, —  stood  alone  at  the  gate  of  the  eternal  city,  and 
knocked  for  entrance, —  this  Church,  I  repeat,  had  the 
power  to  say  whether  that  gate  should  be  opened  or  shut. 
Do  you  wonder  at  the  influence  of  a  religion  organized  like 
this  and  ruling  human  life  by  such  a  sway  ?  Not  one  human 
interest,  not  one  human  imagination,  not  one  human  passion, 
human  hope,  human  fear,  that  the  Church  did  not  play  on, 
as  an  organist  touches  his  familiar  keys. 

But  a  great  change  has  come  over  the  world  since  the 
Church  reigned  in  unquestioned  supremacy  over  all  the  in- 
terests of  human  life;  and  there  are  many  who  fancy  that 
that  change  means  not  only  a  diminution  of  the  power,  a 
disallowing  of  the  claims  of  the  Church,  but  its  gradual  ex- 
tinction, its  dying  out,  its  passing  away  from  among  men. 

I  wish  to  note  some  few  of  these  changes,  and  see  if  we 
can  find  what  their  significance  really  is,  and  so  determine 
what  our  attitude  to-day  ought  to  be  concerning  religion  in 
its  organized  form  as  a  Church. 

We  no  longer  believe"  that  the  Church  —  any  church  —  has 
any  exclusive  authority  to  speak  the  ultimate  word  for  God 
on  any  subject  in  heaven  or  on  earth.  We  no  longer  believe 
that  the  Church  has  any  special,  peculiar,  exclusive  informa- 
tion on  any  namable  subject  that  is  not  open  to  intelligent 
and  reverent  men  outside  the  Church.  We  do  not  believe 
that  the  temple  has  any  private  staircase  by  which  its  priests 
can  climb  into  the  presence  of  the  All-wise,  isten  to  the 
counsels  of  God,  and  repeat  them  to  men.  The  Church  no 
longer  touches  human  life  at  so  many  points  as  it  once  did. 
Intelligent  men  and  women  do  not  think  that  the  prosperity 


The  Church  139 

of  the  child  in  this  world  or  its  salvation  in  another  depends 
necessarily  upon  any  priest's  touching  its  forehead  with  a 
drop  of  water.  Men  die  with  no  priest  at  their  bedside,  and 
have  no  fear  that  God  will  treat  them  differently  on  that 
account.  Science  and  literature  and  art  and  music  are  no 
longer  provinces  of  the  Church's  kingdom.  The  Church 
has  lost  apparently,  like  a  kingdom  being  dismembered,  one 
province  after  another.  Science  asserts  its  right  to  exist  for 
its  own  sake,  and  does  not  fail  to  do  its  own  work  after  its 
own  methods  and  to  stand  by  them,  whether  the  Church 
approves  or  disapproves.  Art  has  a  field  of  its  own.  It  is 
no  longer  only  religious  art.  No  longer  does  it  exist  simply 
to  illustrate  the  doctrines,  traditions,  beliefs,  hopes,  and  fears 
of  the  Church.  Music  has  established  a  kingdom  of  its 
own,  governed  by  its  own  laws,  regulated  by  its  own  ideals, 
and  is  no  longer  dependent  upon  ecclesiastical  favor  or  dis- 
favor. Literature  has  multiplied  itself  almost  to  infinity; 
but,  if  it  uses  the  church  doctrines,  or  if  a  priest  or  a  minis- 
ter is  represented  as  a  character  in  a  novel,  or  if  the  Church's 
ideas  are  introduced,  these  are  simply  incidental.  What  lit- 
erature regards  as  its  true  mission  is  to  represent  human  life. 

We  no  longer  believe  that  any  priesthood  has  power  to 
bless  or  ban  the  soul,  to  open  or  shut  the  gates  of  destiny. 
All  these  ideas  have  passed  away  from  among  intelligent 
and  free  men.  Almost  every  single  one  of  these  special 
claims  of  the  Church  is  now  disallowed.  Men  stand  up  free 
from  their  domination. 

We  might  think  that  this  is  what  the  pope  of  Rome  de- 
clares it  to  be,  decay,  degeneracy,  a  falling  away  from  God, 
were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  humanity  in  all  directions  is 
better  to-day  than  it  was  in  those  so-called  ages  of  faith. 

The  average  health  and  longevity  of  men  and  women  have 
increased.  Men  and  women  are  more  intelligent.  There  is 


140  My  Creed 

less  of  cruelty,  less  of  hate,  less  of  crime,  less  of  vice,  less  of 
depravity,  less  of  poverty,  less  of  general  degradation  in 
spite  of  these  changes  that  have  come  over  the  Church. 
The  world  has  been  swinging  out  of  the  shadow  into  the 
sunlight;  and  life  is  better,  fairer,  sweeter,  nobler  to-day 
than  ever  in  any  age  of  the  past. 

We  are  compelled,  then,  to  think  that  this  is  not  degen- 
eracy, not  decay,  that  has  been  going  on.  We  are  not 
farther  away  from  the  love  of  God  than  were  those  clois- 
tered saints  of  the  olden  time.  But  what  is  the  significance 
of  these  changes  ?  Are  we  become  secularized  ?  Are  we 
losing  the  thought  of  the  presence  and  the  life  of  God  out  of 
the  world  ?  Is  the  time  coming  when  we  shall  be  all  secular, 
when  there  will  be  nothing  sacred  left, —  no  more  reverence, 
no  more  worship,  no  more  of  the  ideal,  no  more  love  of 
these  highest  things  ?  Shall  the  spirit  have  its  wings  clipped, 
and  be  harnessed  into  the  every-day  service  of  man's  com- 
mon needs  on  the  common  highways  of  life  ?  Is  this  the 
tendency?  I  think  not.  Rather  do  I  believe  that  the 
Church,  organized  religion,  is  to  maintain  its  supremacy  still 
in  the  highest  regions  of  human  thought  and  life,  and  that 
all  these  things  which  have  seemed  to  be  taken  away  from 
the  province  of  religion  are  to  be  recognized  again  under 
another  name,  as  being  no  less  in  the  service  of  God,  of  the 
highest  in  human  life,  than  they  were  in  the  olden  time. 

What  does  the  Church  stand  for  to-day?  In  the  first 
place,  we  may  be  quite  sure  that  it  is  not  dying  out  of  the 
world,  and  that  it  does  not  die  out  of  the  interest  of  the 
most  intelligent  men.  Mr.  Huxley  to-day,  for  example,  is  as 
intensely,  profoundly,  interested  in  any  vital  religious  ques- 
tion as  is  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  or  the  Pope  of 
Rome;  and  those  who  stand  for  the  highest  reaches  of 
human  intellect  are  telling  us  every  day  that  not  only  does 


The  Church  141 

religion  show  no  signs  of  dying,  but  that,  in  the  very  nature 
of  things,  it  is  one  of  the  immortals. 

Religion,  then,  will  remain ;  and  since  religion  remains,  and 
since  all  men  and  women  who  think  and  care  for  their  kind 
must  be  interested  in  it,  all  the  natural  reasons  for  relig- 
ious organizations,  for  the  Church,  will  remain  unweakened, 
as  I  believe,  in  their  power.  We  are  passing  through  a 
time  of  transition  and  confusion  ;  but  we  shall  come  back 
to  our  loyalty, —  not  only  to  religion,  but  to  a  wider,  deeper, 
loftier,  more  intelligent  loyalty  than  the  world  has  ever 
known. 

Let  me  indicate  to  you  as  briefly  as  I  can  some  few  of  the 
things  for  which  the  Church  stands  to-day,  peculiarly,  exclu- 
sively, as  no  other  institution  does.  The  Church  —  and,  all 
the  time  when  I  am  using  this  word  "  Church,"  I  mean  the 
Church  of  the  living  God  of  to-day,  not  the  church  in  any 
particular  town  or  State,  or  any  special  organization,  but 
those  people  who  are  in  vital  sympathy  with  the  real  life 
of  God, —  the  Church,  I  say,  stands  for  God's  truth  just  as 
much  as  it  ever  claimed  to  in  the  past, —  not  for  the  exclusive 
possession  of  it,  not  for  the  idea  that  it  has  it  all,  but  for  a 
reverent,  loving,  open-eyed  search  for  truth.  It  stands  as 
God's  authority  on  earth,  listening  for  his  latest  whisper, 
and  regarding  it  as  its  first,  highest  duty  to  speak  that  truth 
of  God  fearlessly  to  all  mankind.  Whatever  else  a  minister 
may  be,  his  first,  last,  and  great  duty  is  to  listen,  to  seek  to 
find  God's  truth,  and  then  speak  it  in  the  face  of  all  the 
world.  The  great  mission  of  God's  minister  is  that  of  a 
teacher,  to  teach  people  those  truths  that  touch  the  question 
of  how  to  live. 

All  truth  is  not  equally  important.  It  might  be  very  inter- 
esting for  us  to  find  out  the  geography  of  the  back  side  of 
the  moon,  which  we  have  never  seen ;  but,  though  that  is 


142  My  Creed 

God's  truth,  though  a  thousand  other  things  are  God's  truth, 
that  which  the  Church  and  the  Church's  true  minister  must 
stand  for,  first,  last,  and  all  the  time,  is  such  truth  of  God  as 
touches  and  shapes  human  living. 

Then,  in  the  next  place,  God's  true  Church  stands  for 
the  ideal,  for  essential  manhood  and  womanhood,  as  the  one 
great  thing  in  human  life.  We  are  apt  to  get  confused,  in 
the  midst  of  our  daily  observation,  by  this  interest  or  that. 
Many  men  live  as  though  the  one  thing  in  all  the  world  was 
for  them  to  make  a  certain  amount  of  money.  Many  other 
men  live  as  though  they  cared  simply  to  earn  fame,  as  the 
writer  of  a  book,  a  poem,  a  novel.  Others  live  as  though 
the  great  thing  was  to  find  out  scientific  truth, —  facts  in 
regard  to  the  source,  the  conformation  of  the  earth,  the 
antiquity  of  the  race.  Another  lives  as  though  the  one 
thing  worth  living  for  was  to  gain  a  political  position ;  an- 
other, as  though  to  attain  a  certain  level  in  human  society 
was  the  one  thing  worth  human  effort.  But  do  not  you  see 
that  all  these  things  become  as  nothing  when  compared  to 
the  question  whether  a  man  is  a  man  or  a  woman  is  a 
woman  ? 

All  these  things  are  noble,  if  a  man  keeps  mastery  of  them 
and  makes  them  serve  him.  But  he  becomes  petty,  degraded, 
half  man,  no  man,  when  these  get  the  upper  hand,  and  he  is 
their  slave.  The  best  thing  that  this  world  has  yet  produced 
is  a  man.  This  world  is  a  garden  for  the  production  of  this 
one  tree  of  human  life, —  to  give  it  range,  room,  air,  dew,  sun- 
shine, so  that  it  may  bloom  into  beauty  and  sweetness,  and 
produce  the  fruits  of  noble  character.  All  money,  science, 
art,  music,  literature,  political  power,  social  position, —  all 
these  are  simply  these  surrounding  conditions  of  soil,  dew, 
rain,  sunshine,  that  give  one  opportunity  to  grow.  And  if  he 
grows  and  becomes  a  man,  no  matter  in  what  barren  soil, 


The  Church  143 

he  has  done  the  best  he  could ;  and,  if  he  do  not  grow,  no 
matter  how  much  gardening  there  may  be,  the  verdict,  at 
least  of  God  and  of  other  men,  will  be  :  "  Cut  it  down  !  It 
only  cumbers  the  ground,  and  is  in  the  way  of  some  finer 
thing." 

The  Church  then,  I  say,  as  no  other  institution  does  or 
can,  stands  for  just  this,  ringing  in  the  ears  of  all  the  world : 
You  are  men,  and  you  are  women,  you  are  sons  and  daugh- 
ters of  God ;  and  the  one  great  thing  in  life  is  for  you  to  be 
children  of  God,  and  all  these  other  things  are  folly,  if  they 
do  not  help  it  on.  The  true  Church  does  attempt  to  realize 
this  organization  of  this  kind  of  people.  We  ought  to  have 
here,  within  these  walls,  an  attempt  at  any  rate,  a  manly, 
intelligent  attempt,  to  organize  ourselves  on  the  basis  of  our 
manhood  and  womanhood,  without  any  regard  to  where  we 
live  before  we  come  here.  This  is  the  ideal.  This  is  the 
thing  that  the  true  Church  ought  to  stand  for  in  human  life. 
Do  you  see  the  bearing,  the  range,  of  that?  I  have  no  time 
to  enlarge  upon  it. 

Then  the  Church  stands  —  and  I  know  of  nothing  else  that 
does  so  stand — for  worship,  for  the  uplook  and  the  outlook 
of  life  toward  higher  things  than  we  have  yet  attained.  All 
that  this  world  has  achieved  of  good  has  been  through  the 
fact  that  men  have  grasped  at  the  intangible,  elusive  ideals 
of  something  higher  than  themselves,  and  which  they  have 
felt  they  must  bow  before  in  awe  as  being  an  outshining  of 
the  Divine.  They  have  bowed  and  worshipped  before  it,  and 
thus  been  transformed  into  its  image.  It  is  this  which  the 
Church  is  attempting  to  stand  for, —  the  divine  side  of  life 
realized  in  the  hearts  and  lives  of  men  and  women. 

Then  the  Church  stands  for  trust.  What  a  maze  this  life 
of  ours  is, —  a  maze  that  we  trust  has  a  plan  in  it,  but  that  we 
cannot  yet  see  clearly  or  unravel !  We  wonder  what  we  are, 


144  ^  Creed 

why  we  are  so  circumstanced,  at  the  perplexities  and  diffi- 
culties that  come  to  us.  We  come  to  pathways  that  lead 
this  way  and  that ;  and  we  stop  before  them,  and  know  not 
which  to  take.  We  are  the  followers  of  many  a  will-o'-the- 
wisp  that  leads  us  astray  through  bog  and  marsh.  We 
sometimes  feel  it  difficult  to  tell  whether  the  shining  through 
the  gloom  is  from  one  of  God's  lights  or  the  light  that  will 
lead  us  astray. 

The  Church  in  all  ages  has  stood  for  the  trust  of  the 
human  heart  in  a  guidance  higher  than  we.  It  has  stood 
for  that  faith  which  takes  hold  of  God's  hand,  and  says,  "  I 
know  not  the  way,  but  he  leads." 

And  then,  at  the  very  last,  when  we  are  on  the  borders 
of  the  shadow,  the  Church  stands  for  the  hope  that  whispers 
to  us  that,  since  we  are  the  children  of  God,  we  are  partakers 
of  his  eternal  life  ;  and  that  helps  us  to  look  death  calmly  in 
the  face,  see  through  the  mask  of  fright  and  fear  and  super- 
stition, and  detect  the  loving  eyes  of  God's  angel  under- 
neath, so  that  we  are  ready  to  let  him  lead  us  out  into  that 
darkness  which  we  believe  shall  be  the  light  of  the  ever- 
lasting day. 

The  Church,  then,  still  stands  for  all  these  things,  the 
divinest  and  highest  and  noblest  things  in  us, —  for  those 
that  link  us  with  God  and  with  an  eternal  destiny.  And  the 
Church  has  a  right,  then,  to  use  what  ?  Any  form  of  organi- 
zation, any  books,  any  services,  any  ceremonies,  any  instru- 
mentalities, any  science,  art,  literature,  music, —  anything 
that  shall  help,  that  is  alive,  that  lifts  us,  that  can  assist  in 
the  attainment  of  her  grand  ideal  dreams. 


SALVATION. 


IN  order  that  we  may  have  the  whole  problem  clearly 
before  us,  I  propose,  in  rapid  outline  sketches,  to  set  before 
you  the  scheme  of  the  universe  and  the  theory  of  salvation 
that  springs  out  of  it,  which  underlie  the  doctrines  and  the 
activities  of  the  popular  churches.  I  am  aware  that  a  large 
part  of  it  is  already  familiar  to  you ;  but  I  need  to  present 
it  in  this  clear  outline  way,  in  order  that  we  may  see  pre- 
cisely what  we  are  dealing  with,  and  may  contrast  it  with 
some  other  theory  that  perhaps  we  shall  be  more  likely  to 
hold. 

I  shall  not  confine  myself  in  this  picture  entirely  to  that 
which  may  be  definitely  derived  from  the  Scriptures. 
Rather,  I  shall  enlarge  that  picture,  drawing  some  materials 
from  poetry  and  tradition,  in  order  that  we  may  complete  it 
as  it  lies  in  the  popular  mind.  For  it  is  undoubtedly  true 
that  there  are  certain  elements  of  it  which  do  not  find  abso- 
lute warrant  in  the  Bible,  though  there  may  be  hints  that 
look  that  way,  but  which  are  derived  from  tradition  and 
poetic  handling  of  it  by  the  great  writers. 

Not  a  great  while  ago,  for  example,  Mr.  Talmage  said, 
speaking  of  the  obligations  of  the  great  writers  of  the  world 
to  the  Bible,  that  Milton  owed  his  entire  poem  to  the  Script- 
ures. Yet  you  are  aware  that  there  are  certain  features  of 
it  that  are  not  clearly  set  forth  in  the  Old  Testament  or  in 
the  New.  Still,  it  is  undoubtedly  true,  as  I  said,  that  there 


146  My  Creed 

are  hints  here  and  there  which  need  only  to  be  expanded, 
carried  out,  finished,  to  give  us  the  complete  result  of  the 
scheme  of  things  with  which  Paradise  Lost  dealt. 

I  wish,  furthermore,  to  say,  lest  some  one  should  choose 
to  criticise  me  on  this  point,  that  all  which  I  shall  hereafter 
declare  concerning  the  truth  and  the  justice  of  this  theory 
would  hold  equally  true  if  I  gave  only  so  much  of  it  as  has 
distinct  and  definite  warrant  in  the  Bible,  so  that  my  enlarg- 
ing the  picture  in  this  way  will  not  necessarily  weaken  the 
force  of  the  points  that  I  wish  to  make. 

To  begin,  then,  at  the  beginning.  In  some  indefinite 
period,  before  the  world  was  created,  there  was  war  in 
heaven.  Up  to  a  certain  time,  it  seems  that  even  the  angels 
had  not  clearly  understood  the  real  nature  and  rank  of 
Christ.  Milton  tells  us  that  on  some  particular  occasion  God 
declared  to  the  assembled  multitudes  of  the  heavenly  hosts 
that  Jesus  was  his  well-beloved  and  only-begotten  son,  and 
placed  him  at  his  right  hand,  as  supreme  over  all  the  forces 
of  the  universe.  This  became  the  occasion  of  rebellion  on 
the  part  of  the  ambitious  Lucifer,  who  up  to  this  time  had 
regarded  himself  as  the  one  next  to  the  Supreme,  equal  to 
the  highest.  He  was  able  to  engage  in  this  rebellion  a  one- 
third  part  of  all  the  angels.  After  a  long  contest,  he  is  at 
last  cast  out  into  the  abyss ;  and  hell  is  created  as  his  future 
home,  and  the  home  of  all  his  followers.  So  heaven  is 
purged  and  is  at  peace  once  more.  It  is  then  determined 
in  the  councils  of  the  Infinite  that  this  earth  shall  be  created, 
and  made  the  abode  of  the  new  creature,  man ;  and  Jesus  is 
commissioned,  as  the  agent  of  the  Supreme,  to  create  the 
world,  the  sun,  the  stars,  all  this  system  of  things  we  see. 

Meantime,  Satan  has  heard  a  rumor  concerning  this  pro- 
posed creation  of  the  world  and  man ;  and  he  consults 
with  his  followers,  and  determines  to  go  forth  and  find  the 


Salvation  147 

truth  of  it,  and  see  if,  in  this  other  field,  he  cannot  com- 
mence over  again  the  warfare  of  his  endless  hate  against  the 
Supreme  Power.  He  finds  this  earth  sufficiently  unguarded, 
so  that  he  enters,  discovers  the  Garden  of  Eden,  sees  Adam 
and  Eve,  watches  his  opportunity  when  Eve  is  alone, —  think- 
ing her  to  be  the  weaker  of  the  two  against  whom  to  wage 
his  contest, —  and  persuades  her  to  disobey  the  word  of  her 
Creator  and  Lord.  Thus  he  brings  about  the  fall  of  man 
and  the  ruin  of  this  creation  so  recently  completed.  The 
result  of  this  disobedience  on  the  part  of  Adam  and  Eve  is 
supposed  to  be  of  such  a  nature  that  it  can  be  entailed  on 
all  the  children  that  are  born  to  them.  So  that  the  whole 
world  from  that  time  on  lies  under  the  wrath  of  God  for 
disobedience. 

Now  that  we  may  understand  clearly  how  this  matter  has 
lain  in  the  minds  of  theologians  of  many  centuries  past,  we 
need  to  form  a  conception  of  this  world  and  its  relation  to 
God  such  as  they  entertained.  Their  idea  was  that  this 
earth  was  only  a  sort  of  province  in  the  universal  kingdom  of 
God,  and  that  by  an  act  of  disobedience  this  certain  set  of 
God's  subjects  had  rebelled  against  him.  The  earth,  then, 
according  to  this  theory,  is  only  a  province  in  God's  king- 
dom ;  and  of  course,  since  all  its  inhabitants  have  committed 
high  treason,  they  are  outlawed,  and  have  no  more  claim  on 
the  heavenly  potentate.  It  rests  entirely  with  him  as  to 
whether  he  will  pardon  any  of  them  ;  it  rests  entirely  with 
him  as  to  the  terms  that  he  shall  require  as  a  condition  of 
any  pardon. 

Now,  right  here,  you  need,  in  the  light  of  this  theory,  to 
understand  that  much  abused  and  much  misunderstood  doc- 
trine of  total  depravity.  It  is  not  a  pleasant  doctrine  in  any 
light  in  which  it  can  be  viewed ;  but  most  liberals  that  I 
have  talked  with  seem  to  me  almost  entirely  to  misconceive 


148  My  Creed 

it,  and  what  the  orthodox  mean  by  it.  But,  if  we  are  to 
oppose  a  certain  theory,  we  ought  at  any  rate  to  be  fair  and 
just  enough  to  understand  it  before  we  begin  our  opposition. 
No  orthodox  man  believes  that  the  doctrine  of  total  deprav- 
ity teaches  that  anybody  is  as  bad  as  he  can  be.  That  is 
not  what  they  mean  by  total  depravity  at  all.  What  do  they 
mean?  Precisely  what  I  have  just  been  outlining, —  that 
every  man,  woman,  and  child  on  earth  who  has  not  accepted 
the  terms  of  pardon  that  God  has  offered  is  in  rebellion 
against  God,  outlawed,  cut  off  from  his  mercy,  and  having 
no  part  in  his  love  or  care.  Of  course,  it  makes  no  differ- 
ence what  kind  of  a  life  this  man  lives, —  whether  he  is  good 
or  bad,  whether  he  is  honest,  whether  he  pays  his  debts, 
whether  he  is  kind  to  his  wife  and  loving  towards  his  chil- 
dren, whether  he  is  a  good  neighbor.  That  has  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  question  whether  he  is  in  rebellion 
against  God.  Therefore,  you  see  that,  in  the  light  of  this 
theory,  Mr.  Moody  was  perfectly  justified  in  saying  that  mo- 
rality had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  salvation. 

Consider,  for  a  moment,  a  kingdom  in  rebellion.  Sup- 
pose one  of  the  provinces  of  England  was  in  rebellion 
to-day  against  the  central  power.  Suppose  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  in  it  had  committed  some  act  that  made 
them  partners  to  this  rebellion.  So  far  as  their  relations  to 
the  queen  were  concerned,  it  would  make  no  difference 
whether  they  were  honest  or  dishonest,  kind  or  unkind,  wise 
or  ignorant,  good  or  bad.  Sir  Harry  Vane  was  a  noble  man. 
I  suppose  it  never  entered  into  the  head  of  the  king  to  ques- 
tion whether  he  was  honest,  whether  he  was  a  good  husband, 
kind  to  his  children,  all  those  things  that  make  up  a  noble 
character.  When  Sir  Thomas  More  was  in  the  Tower, 
charged  with  high  treason,  it  made  no  difference  to  the  king 
what  his  private  character  may  have  been.  He  was  guilty 


Salvation  149 

of  treason,  he  was  under  condemnation ;  and  the  king  had 
the  right  to  determine  the  conditions  of  pardon. 

Now,  according  to  this  popular  theory  that  we  are  consid- 
ering, God  has  determined  the  conditions.  He  has  looked 
upon  this  world  lost  and  lying  in  misery,  and  has  deter- 
mined, with  his  consent,  to  send  his  only,  well-beloved  son 
to  take  upon  him  the  condition  of  these  rebels,  to  assume 
their  flesh,  to  assume  their  guilt,  to  bear  their  punishment  in 
their  stead.  If,  then,  we  choose  to  accept  this  offer,  this  one 
only  condition,  we  are  freely  pardoned.  Do  you  not  see, 
again,  that  it  makes  no  difference  as  to  whether  I  am  a  very 
good  man  or  a  very  bad  one,  on  this  theory  ?  If  I  have  ac- 
cepted these  terms,  I  am  pardoned,  I  am  free  from  this  con- 
demnation. Henceforth,  I  am  a  subject  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  Until  I  do  accept,  I  am  a  subject  of  Satan,  the  king 
of  hell,  and  must  look  only  to  share  his  home  and  his  fortunes. 

And  what  is  the  Church  on  this  theory  ?  The  Church  is 
simply  the  militant  band  of  those  that  make  up  the  army  of 
God,  those  that  have  accepted  his  pardon,  those  who  make 
up  one  of  the  great  fighting  armies  on  earth.  They  have 
accepted  the  pardon,  and  become  loyal  to  God  once  more. 
The  rest  are  in  rebellion,  and  it  is  the  Church's  business  to 
proclaim  these  terms  of  pardon  to  the  rebels,  to  get  as  many 
to  join  their  ranks  as  possible ;  and  the  hope  is  that  ulti- 
mately all  the  world  will  accept  the  terms,  and  be  saved. 
The  Church  has  always  held  and  taught  that  those  who  ac- 
cept the  terms  of  pardon  become  God's  subjects  and  share 
his  home.  Those  who  do  not,  no  matter  what  their  charac- 
ter may  be,  are  still  subjects  of  Satan  and  share  his  home. 
The  theory  is  perfectly  consistent,  definite,  clear,  logical, 
provided  you  accept  the  premises, —  provided  this  is  our 
belief  concerning  the  origin  of  things  and  the  way  the  world 
is  governed. 


150  My  Creed 

And  now  what  shall  we  say  about  it  ?  I  wish  to  say,  in 
the  first  place,  that  there  is  not  one  single  particle  of  evi- 
dence producible  on  the  face  of  the  earth  to  prove  that 
it  is  true.  There  is  no  more  reason  for  accepting  it  than 
there  is  for  accepting  the  Greek  or  the  Roman  mythology. 
There  is  no  more  reason  for  accepting  it  than  there  is  for 
believing  the  theory  of  the  universe  taught  by  Buddha. 
There  is  no  more  reason  for  accepting  it  than  there  is  for 
believing  the  stories  concerning  Hercules.  There  is  not  one 
particle  of  evidence  for  it  anywhere. 

Let  us  consider  for  a  moment.  There  are  certain  things, 
certain  facts,  that  we  all  accept,  that  would  be  eagerly 
offered  as  proof.  The  only  trouble  with  these  facts  is  that 
they  are  perfectly  consistent  with  almost  any  other  theory, 
and  that  they  are  not  sufficient  to  establish  the  truth  of  this. 
Those  who  hold  this  theory  tell  us  that  Jesus  came  on  pur- 
pose to  work  out  his  part  in  this  grand  scheme.  He  must 
have  known  about  it  if  he  did.  He  was  the  one,  according 
to  the  theory,  who  created  this  world,  who  created  Adam  and 
Eve  and  the  Garden  of  Eden,  and  placed  them  in  it.  And 
he  it  was  who  condemned  them  and  turned  them  out  of  the 
garden  after  they  had  listened  to  the  voice  of  the  serpent. 
Jesus,  they  say,  came  down  here  on  purpose  to  work  out  his 
part  of  this  general  plan ;  and  yet,  in  all  his  recorded  words, 
he  never  alludes  to  it  anywhere.  He  never  even  mentions 
the  names  of  Adam  and  Eve,  or  the  Garden  of  Eden,  or  the 
Fall.  He  never  says  anything  about  his  work  of  atonement ; 
never  anything  about  his  being  the  second  person  in  the 
Trinity;  not  one  word  about  the  whole  scheme.  A  very 
strange  silence ! 

Then,  as  we  study  the  history  of  the  Hebrews,  we  find 
that  there  is  no  hint  of  it  in  their  earliest  scriptures.  We 
are  to  remember  —  and  the  larger  part  of  the  fogginess  of 


Salvation  151 

our  religious  conception  springs  out  of  the  fact  that  we  for- 
get it  —  that  the  order  in  which  the  books  of  the  Bible  are 
printed  is  not  the  order  of  their  composition.  The  writings 
of  the  great  prophets  are  the  oldest  parts  of  the  Bible. 
Genesis,  and  all  the  earlier  books  as  they  stand,  were  writ- 
ten, some  of  them,  hundreds  of  years  after  the  time  of  the 
first  great  prophets.  These  great  prophets  know  nothing 
about  any  Adam  or  Eve,  any  Garden,  any  Fall.  They  say 
nothing  about  them.  They  know  nothing  of  any  Golden 
Age  in  the  past.  The  only  Golden  Age  of  which  they  speak 
or  seem  to  dream  is  the  one  that  modern  science  dreams  of, 
which  it  hopes  to  create  in  the  future. 

We  find  the  Garden  of  Eden,  Adam,  Eve,  the  serpent, 
that  whole  mythical  cycle  of  stories  that  gathers  about  the 
early  condition  of  the  world,  only  in  connection  with  and 
after  the  Babylonish  captivity.  And  it  is  as  clear  as  day- 
light that  they  were  borrowed  from  the  Persians ;  for  we  find 
them  all  in  Persia  before  the  Jews  went  there,  and  we  do 
not  find  them  among  the  Jews  till  long  after  they  had  been 
there. 

All  this  old  scheme,  then,  is  simply  pagan  tradition,  with 
no  warrant  in  the  real,  original  religion  of  the  Hebrews,  with 
no  warrant  in  the  words  of  Christ,  and  only  wrought  out 
through  the  course  of  ages  by  dreaming  theologians  who 
never  thought  of  such  a  thing  as  a  critical  investigation  as  to 
whether  they  were  true  or  not.  I  assert,  and  challenge 
denial  over  all  the  world,  that  there  is  not  one  particle  of 
rational,  intelligent  evidence  on  earth  that  any  part  of  this 
story  is  true.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  abundant  evi- 
dence that  no  part  of  it  is  true. 

How,  then,  do  so  many  people  happen  to  believe  it  ?  It 
is  easy  to  explain  this,  if  you  have  studied  human  history 
and  human  nature  carefully.  How  did  it  happen  that  the 


152  My  Creed 

whole  populace  of  Athens  believed  in  the  Olympian  deities  ? 
How  did  it  happen  that  even  Socrates,  the  wisest  and  no- 
blest of  them  all,  could  so  far  countenance  the  popular 
religion  as  to  ask  his  disciples  to  offer  the  customary  sacri- 
fice of  two  cocks  to  ^Esculapius,  only  a  little  while  before 
his  death?  How  did  it  happen  that  these  old  world-wide 
traditions  have  become  so  inwrought  into  the  very  blood  and 
fibre  of  people,  that  they  are  second  nature  to  them  ?  Or 
that  so  many  foolish,  frivolous  superstitions  are  still  cher- 
ished by  intelligent  people,  who,  if  you  challenged  them, 
would  tell  you  that  they  do  not  really  believe  them,  yet  the 
very  next  day  would  act  as  though  they  did  ?  These  things 
are  inherited.  They  have  become  a  part  of  our  traditions. 
They  enter  into  the  fibre  of  our  brain;  and  it  takes  ages, 
sometimes,  to  free  ourselves. 

Then,  when  you  remember  the  kind  of  education  that 
people  receive,  it  is  easy  to  understand  this.  The  great 
majority  of  people  in  Boston  to-day  are  not  free  to  think 
and  study.  Popular  pressure  is  brought  to  bear  upon  them. 
Two-thirds  at  least  of  the  people  in  this  country  do  not  dare 
to  be  known  as  thinking  for  themselves,  lest  it  should  injure 
their  business  prosperity  or  their  social  standing.  People 
have  been  taught  that  it  is  a  sin  to  think,  to  be  free,  to 
question.  They  have  been  taught  that  this  cringing  accept- 
ance of  whatever  the  Church  chose  to  offer  them  was  a 
virtue.  I  have  had  occasion  to  tell  you  before  that  one  of 
the  most  intelligent  ladies  that  I  have  ever  met  in  this  city 
said  to  me  frankly :  "  I  would  give  the  whole  world  if  I 
dared  to  believe  as  you  do ;  but  how  do  I  know  but,  after 
all  the  reasoning,  there  may  be  the  kind  of  God  in  the  uni- 
verse that  people  tell  me  about?  And,  if  there  is,  I  am 
afraid  of  him." 

Within  two  weeks,  I  have  received  one  of  the  most  pitiful 


Salvation  153 

letters  I  ever  read.  It  was  from  a  young  man  in  Brooklyn, 
twenty  years  of  age,  whose  health  is  ruined,  who  has  been 
obliged  to  give  up  his  preparation  for  college,  whose  future 
is  destroyed,  simply  by  the  haunting  fear  of  hell.  He  begs 
me,  if  I  can  in  any  way,  to  help  him  out  of  it.  And  a  friend 
who  has  talked  with  him  in  Brooklyn  tells  me  that  he  al- 
ready knows  all  the  arguments,  all  the  facts,  that  he  is  well 
educated,  only  he  keeps  saying  to  himself,  "  Perhaps,  per- 
haps, perhaps  it  may  be  true  after  all ;  and  I  am  afraid." 

Again,  arguments  like  this  are  heard.  I  meet  them  on 
every  hand.  I  have  a  friend  who  is  a  liberal  clergyman, 
whose  mother  is  still  devoutly  a  follower  of  the  old  faith ; 
and  she  says  to  him  :  "  My  son,  if  your  theories  are  correct, 
I  am  safe  as  well  as  you.  If  my  theory  is  correct,  I  am 
safe,  and  you  are  lost."  So  this  appeal  to  prudence,  at  any 
cost,  is  urged  upon  everybody.  There  are  reasons  enough 
why  people  do  not  dare  to  rise  and  look  heaven  in  the  face, 
and  question  the  great  facts  of  the  universe  and  human  life, 
to  think  for  themselves,  and  live  out  the  results  of  their  con- 
victions. The  great  mass  of  the  people  that  we  meet  every 
day  are  not  educated  in  this  direction.  It  is  no  fault  of 
theirs.  They  are  busy  about  the  things  of  this  world.  They 
must  take  their  opinions  from  somebody;  and  they  take 
counsel  with  prudence,  and  go  with  the  majority. 

If  this  theory  of  the  universe  were  true,  I,  for  one,  should 
find  no  response  in  my  heart ;  nor  should  I  find  that  I  could 
be  grateful  to  God  for  his  mercies.  I  know  how  impressive 
the  picture  is  that  can  be  drawn  of  Jesus  sitting  on  the 
throne  of  universal  dominion,  the  well-beloved  Son  of  God, 
leaving  his  glory,  coming  down  here,  submitting  to  be  born 
of  a  virgin,  taking  upon  himself  our  condition  and  suffering, 
going  about  doing  good,  at  last  crucified,  in  order  that  he 
might  save  those  that  believe.  When  we  look  simply  at 


154  My  Creed 

this  picture  of  the  supposed  tender  mercies  and  love  of  God, 
so  great  an  impression  can  be  made  that  I  do  not  wonder 
whole  audiences  are  bathed  in  tears. 

But  let  us  look  back  of  this  picture  of  mercies,  and  see 
what  the  whole  scheme  includes.  Let  me  show  you  what 
I  mean  by  an  illustration.  Within  two  years,  you  will  re- 
member there  was  an  epidemic  of  cholera  in  the  city  of 
Naples,  brought  about,  as  everybody  knows,  by  perfectly 
natural  and  preventable  causes,  but  looked  upon  by  the 
great  mass  of  the  church  followers  in  Italy  as  a  mysterious, 
divine  visitation.  King  Humbert  does  at  that  time  what 
very  few  kings  would  have  dared  to  do.  He  goes  to  Naples, 
and  passes  through  the  infected  part  of  the  city.  He  pays 
out  of  his  own  private  fortune  uncounted  sums  for  the  good 
of  his  people.  He  gives  money,  time,  and  risks  his  very 
life,  in  showing  his  love  for  his  subjects.  There  is  probably 
no  king  in  Europe  who  is  more  tenderly  loved  and  rever- 
enced than  he,  very  largely  on  account  of  this  display  of 
his  tender  compassion  and  humane  mercy.  But  suppose 
King  Humbert  had  created  the  city  of  Naples ;  suppose  he 
had  created  all  its  inhabitants  ;  suppose  he  had  planted  the 
cholera  there  on  purpose ;  suppose  he  had  done  it  that  he 
might  have  an  opportunity  to  make  a  theatrical  display  of 
his  tenderness  and  love  ;  suppose  he  let  a  large  part  of  the 
people  —  some  thousands  —  die,  and,  to  show  what  he  could 
do,  saved  a  few,  to  let  people  know  how  tenderly  merciful 
and  kind  he  could  be;  and  suppose  he  did  all  this  "for  his 
own  glory  " :  would  the  people  of  Italy  be  especially  grateful 
for  his  tenderness  and  care  ?  Rather  would  they  have 
reason  to  hunt  him  from  his  throne  and  kingdom,  until  his 
name  were  blotted  out  from  among  the  monsters  of  the 
earth. 

We  must  remember  that  it  is  a  part  of  this  theory  that  we 


Salvation  155 

are  considering  that  God  created  this  world  and  sent  it  spin- 
ning through  the  blue;  that  he  created  all  its  inhabitants 
and  conditioned  and  circumstanced  them  just  as  they  were, 
knowing  they  would  fall ;  that  he  did  it  all  on  purpose  ;  that 
he  let  the  devil,  in  the  guise  of  a  sdrpent,  whisper  his  allur- 
ing words ;  that  he  did  not  protect  his  innocent  creatures 
against  temptation.  He  is  responsible,  on  that  theory,  for 
the  fall  in  the  first  place,  and  for  the  eternal  hell  which  is 
its  result. 

In  the  light  of  that,  if  this  picture  be  true,  the  descent  of 
Jesus,  and  the  cross,  instead  of  calling  for  gratitude,  should 
lead  every  man,  woman,  and  child  on  earth  to  fling  universal 
and  eternal  defiance  in  the  face  of  heaven,  even  at  the  cost 
of  eternal  hell.  There  has  not  been  on  earth,  in  all  human 
history,  a  monster  comparable  to  the  character  of  God  on 
any  such  theory  as  this, —  not  one.  Nero?  He  was  mercy 
incarnate  in  comparison  ;  for  what  did  he  do  ?  According  to 
the  story,  he  simply  clothed  a  few  Christians  in  garments  of 
pitch  and  tar,  and  set  them  on  fire  to  light  his  garden  at 
night.  A  few  hours  of  suffering,  and  they  were  at  peace. 
But  God,  according  to  this  theory,  has  uncounted  myriads  in 
flames  that  will  never  be  quenched. 

Take  the  same  theory  in  regard  to  the  terrible  accident 
that  has  just  happened.  If  the  president  of  the  road,  or  his 
son,  or  his  immediate  friends,  should  have  gone  there,  spent 
their  private  fortunes,  risked  their  lives,  to  help  the  sufferers 
after  they  had  plunged  from  the  bridge,  we  should  have  ex- 
claimed at  their  tenderness  and  mercy.  But  if  they  had 
arranged  the  road,  placed  the  broken  rail,  putting  it  there  on 
purpose  that  the  train  might  go  over,  and  then  helped  to 
save  a  few,  what  then  would  you  say  ? 

Another  consideration.  The  universal  belief  of  this  the- 
ory which  I  have  outlined  can  be  looked  on  as  nothing  other 


156  My  Creed 

than  a  universal  calamity.  Why  ?  For  the  simple  reason 
that,  since  it  is  not  true,  and  since  a  great  majority  of  people 
believe  that  it  is  true,  it  diverts  the  universal  thought  of 
Christendom  from  the  real  state  of  affairs,  from  the  real 
needs,  sufferings,  and  dangers  of  the  world,  and  turns  the 
attention  away  from  any  adequate  study  of  the  facts,  that 
might  lead  to  an  adequate  remedy.  Only  consider,  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  men  giving  their  hours  and  days, 
all  their  time,  their  best  thought,  their  best  enthusiasm,  their 
money,  all  their  endeavor,  to  work  on  a  theory  which  is  not 
true,  and  which,  consequently,  cannot  lead  to  the  desired 
result  of  lifting  up  and  saving  the  world  from  the  evils  that 
are  crushing  out  its  life. 

Here  is  a  precisely  parallel  thing.  A  few  years  ago  there 
was  an  epidemic  of  small-pox  in  Canada.  The  Church  or- 
ganized processions,  marched  through  the  infected  districts, 
and  offered  its  prayers  to  God  for  relief.  We  all  know  that 
the  processions  and  the  prayers  accomplished  nothing, 
unless,  possibly,  the  processions  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with 
spreading  the  infection.  Do  you  not  see  what  a  waste  of 
time  and  effort  was  here  ?  Suppose  all  the  people  in  the  city 
of  Montreal  had  understood  the  causes  of  the  epidemic,  and 
had  set  about  removing  those  causes  by  rational  and  intel- 
ligent means.  Do  you  not  see  the  evil  that  results  if,  in  the 
presence  of  any  great  calamity  or  suffering,  the  attention  is 
turned  to  false  causes  and  remedies  ?  It  takes  away  time, 
strength,  money,  means,  from  that  which  might  be  looked  to 
as  able  to  accomplish  the  desired  results. 

And  so  this  confining  of  the  attention  of  the  civilized 
world  to  a  scheme  of  human  history  and  human  salvation 
which  is  baseless  as  a  dream  of  the  night  takes  away  enthu- 
siasm, money,  time,  effort,  from  the  adequate  study  of  the 
real  evils  under  which  the  world  is  suffering,  and  from  an 


Salvation  157 

attempt  to  remove  those  evils.  One  who  studies  human 
history  with  an  unbiassed  mind  can  come  to  only  one  con- 
clusion :  that  the  Church,  dreaming  forever  of  this  theory  of 
things,  has  used  its  utmost  endeavor  to  thwart,  hinder, 
oppose,  the  rest  of  the  world  in  trying  to  find  out  the  real 
state  of  affairs.  Astronomy,  chemistry,  political  economy, 
medicine,  the  care  of  poverty,  anaesthetics  for  the  alleviation 
of  human  suffering, —  every  one  of  these  has  been  opposed 
from  first  to  last  by  the  organized  Orthodoxy  of  the  age. 
And  then,  as  in  the  case  of  slavery,  in  spite  of  all  it  has 
done  against  them,  after  the  grand  result  has  been  achieved, 
it  has  turned  round  and  claimed  the  result  as  its  own.  The 
churches  to-day  are  beginning  to  claim  the  abolition  of 
slavery  as  entirely  their  work ;  but  everybody  who  has 
studied  the  history  of  the  time  knows  that  in  that  early  day 
there  was  hardly  a  minister  in  Boston  who  dared  to  say  a 
word,  except  a  few  of  the  heretics, —  hardly  one  among  all 
the  orthodox  of  the  time. 

Now,  then,  what  are  we  to  think  ?  What  is  the  theory  of 
human  history  that  we  are  to  hold  ?  I  believe  that  we  have 
a  theory  of  things  which  is  no  guess-work,  that  is  not  tradi- 
tional, but  a  theory  wrought  out  on  the  solid  basis  of  scien- 
tific investigation,  and  which  future  study  will  develop  and 
demonstrate  more  and  more  clearly.  We  can  trace  the 
beginning  of  life  on  this  planet.  We  can  trace  the  develop- 
ment of  one  form  from  another,  until  at  last  appears  man, 
man  barbaric,  brutal,  on  the  borders  of  the  animal  world; 
ignorant,  full  of  bestial  passions,  but  with  that  in  him  which 
has  developed  a  Shakspere,  a  Jesus.  The  truth  about 
human  history  is  to  be  found  in  the  study  of  the  process  of 
the  climbing  of  the  race  out  of  its  barbaric  conditions  up  to 
the  heights  of  civilization.  There  has  been  no  fall ;  there  is 
no  wrath,  only  as  a  figure  of  speech.  There  is  only  that 


158  My  Creed 

terrible,  inexorable  fact  of  the  changelessness  of  God's  laws, 
which  are  the  very  conditions  of  our  life.  If  we  transgress 
at  any  point,  purposely  or  ignorantly,  the  necessary  suffering 
will  follow.  We  speak  of  the  thunder-cloud  as  angry,  and  so 
we  may  speak  by  poetic  license  of  God  as  angry ;  but  there 
is  no  wrath :  there  is  only  the  eternal  wisdom  and  the  eter- 
nal unchangeableness  above  and  beneath  and  around  us. 
There  has  been  no  rebellion  on  earth.  We  are  not  con- 
demned rebels.  We  do  not  need  pardon  in  the  old  sense. 
We  do  not  need  any  salvation  in  the  old  sense.  These 
words  should  either  have  new  conceptions  put  into  them,  or 
else  should  be  disused  and  thrown  aside  like  worn-out  coins. 
We  are  simply  a  race  begun  on  the  borders  of  brutality  and 
ignorance,  but  learning  how  to  live, —  that  is  all.  We  are 
here  at  school.  The  only  thing  for  us  to  do  is  to  find  out 
the  truth  about  this  universe,  about  ourselves,  about  the  con- 
ditions of  helpful  living,  with  the  feeling  that  God  is  not 
angry  with  us,  but  that  he  wants  to  help  us,  that  he  is  trying 
to  help  us,  that  he  is  leading  us  by  his  wisdom,  and  that  he 
is  all  the  help  and  guidance  that  we  need.  Under  his  guid- 
ance and  direction,  we  have  made  all  the  progress  that  we 
have  made ;  and  all  that  we  need  to  do  is  to  study  more 
carefully  the  laws  of  life  and  obey  them,  in  order  ever  to 
ascend  to  higher  and  better  conditions. 

We  need  to  know  another  thing,  that  the  world  has  only 
half  understood,  that  the  old  religion  has  mystified  us  about 
for  ages :  that  the  happiness  and  the  peace  and  the  joy  of 
this  world  come  from  obedience  to  God ;  that  happiness 
does  not  mean  disobedience,  doing  just  what  one  pleases, 
only  with  something  to  be  afraid  of  by  and  by.  That  has 
been  the  church  theory ;  but  it  is  false  from  bottom  to  top. 
The  only  happiness,  the  only  peace,  the  only  joy,  the  only 
prosperity,  is  in  knowing  and  obeying  the  laws  of  God,  which 


Salvation  159 

are  the  laws  of  life  and  growth.  No  man  ever  yet  prospered 
in  opposition  to  those  laws.  We  read  in  the  Old  Testament 
what  the  psalmist  said :  "  I  have  seen  the  wicked  flourish, 
spreading  himself  like  the  branches  of  a  green  bay  tree." 
He  never  saw  anything  of  the  sort,  and  no  man  ever  saw  it. 
There  has  never  been  a  case  on  this  earth  of  the  prosperity 
of  a  wicked  man, —  never.  A  wicked  man  gets  rich,  a 
wicked  man  gets  to  be  president  or  king,  a  wicked  man  may 
have  his  own  way  and  become  powerful ;  but,  in  so  far  as 
those  things  are  concerned  which  any  sane  or  sensible  man 
calls  manly,  those  things  die  in  the  process  of  that  kind  of 
getting  rich,  or  that  kind  of  becoming  king,  in  that  kind  of 
prosperity.  Goodness,  truth,  love,  tenderness,  all  those 
things  that  make  men  and  jvomen  what  they  ought  to  be, 
which  make  them  children  of  God,  helpers  of  their  fellow- 
men,  which  lead  to  peace  and  happiness, —  these  things  can- 
not grow  in  the  atmosphere  of  anything  but  knowledge  of 
and  obedience  to  the  laws  of  God.  Whatever  power  a  man 
may  have,  whatever  position  he  may  occupy,  so  far  as  these 
other  things  are  concerned,  if  he  breaks  the  law  of  the  de- 
velopment of  his  inner  life  and  character,  then  these  things 
die. 

We  need  to  learn  one  other  thing, —  that  I  believe  to  be 
the  profoundest  truth  of  human  life, —  that  we  are  spiritual 
beings,  children  of  the  Infinite  Spirit;  that  there  is  possi- 
bility of  a  personal  relationship  with  that  Infinite  Spirit. 
We  need  to  learn  to  love  its  infinite  loveliness,  to  admire  its 
infinite  beauty,  to  respect  and  obey  its  infinite  right.  We 
need  to  get  on  terms  of  personal  association  and  intimacy 
with  this  heavenly  Father  of  ours.  The  truest,  freest  life  is 
not  a  life  of  calculation  as  to  results  of  thoughts  and  words 
and  deeds.  The  little  boy  who  is  in  a  healthful  condition 
of  love  for  father  and  mother  does  not  stop  on  the  street  to 


160  My  Creed 

calculate  how  many  lashes  it  will  cost  him  to  do  this  thing, 
how  much  pleasure  he  will  have  if  he  does  another.  The 
rule  of  his  life  is  the  remembrance  of  his  mother's  love  and 
what  she  would  like  to  have  him  do ;  and,  if  he  is  a  noble, 
manly  fellow,  this  becomes  instinct  with  him,  and  he  does 
right  because  he  has  learned  from  her  eyes  that  this  is  not 
only  the  noblest,  but  the  happiest  thing  to  do. 

We  need  to  learn  this  personal  relationship  with  our 
Father  in  heaven,  until  we  become  convinced  that,  on  the 
whole  and  in  the  long  run,  obedience  to  this  eternal  right- 
eousness and  love  means  happiness  and  peace  and  joy ;  and 
that  disobedience  to  it  means,  no  matter  what  it  promises,  in 
its  ultimate  outcome,  the  opposite.  We  need  to  have  this 
become  instinct  with  us,  so  that  we  shall  not  stop  to  reason. 

We  need  the  comfort  that  ought  to  come,  and  that  shall 
come,  to  us  by  the  trust  that  this  Infinite  Spirit  controls  and 
governs  human  affairs,  and  that,  whether  our  cause  seem  to 
meet  with  defeat  or  glorious  victory  to-day,  there  can  be  but 
one  outcome  at  the  end,  and  that  —  victory  for  that  which  is 
eternal  truth,  eternal  beauty,  and  eternal  love ;  because  the 
eternal  truth  and  the  eternal  beauty  and  the  eternal  love  are 
God,  and  he  holds,  directs,  and  guides  all  things. 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science. 


BETWEEN  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  God  (which  is  sci- 
ence) and  a  reverent  and  loving  obedience  to  the  laws  of 
God  (which  is  religion),  it  seems  simply  and  only  absurd  to 
suppose  the  possibility  of  any  conflict.  Yes,  to  us,  who  have 
outgrown  that  state  of  mind  to  which  such  an  antagonism 
seemed  not  only  natural,  but  inevitable,  it  does  seem  very 
absurd.  But,  of  course,  it  has  not  seemed  absurd  to  those 
who  believed  it  in  the  past ;  it  does  not  seem  absurd  to  those 
who  still  believe  it  to-day.  To  them,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
very  title  of  this  chapter  would  be  an  absurdity.  Religion 
indebted  to  Science  ?  Rather  would  they  hold  it  true  that 
Science  is  the  modern  antichrist,  "  that  opposeth  and  exalt- 
eth  himself  against  all  that  is  called  God  or  is  worshipped ; 
so  that  he  sitteth  in  the  temple  of  God,  setting  himself  forth 
as  God  "  (II.  Thess.  ii.,  4).  Science,  they  say,  is  the  enemy 
of  revelation ;  it  opposes  knowledge  to  faith  ;  it  encourages 
doubt  in  the  presence  of  divine  mysteries ;  it  impeaches  the 
accuracy  of  the  Bible ;  it  denies  the  fall  of  man  ;  it  refuses 
credit  to  the  miraculous ;  it  questions  the  use  of  prayer ;  it 
casts  a  mist  of  uncertainty  over  the  future  destiny  of  man ; 
it  puts  force  and  law  on  the  throne  of  the  universe,  and  de- 
clares that  God  is  an  unneeded  hypothesis.  It  discredits  the 
whole  scheme  of  salvation,  and  leaves  man  "without  God 
and  without  hope  in  the  world." 


1 62  My  Creed 

Such  is  the  way  in  which  science  is  looked  upon  by  the 
rigorous  and  consistent  champions  of  the  old  faith.  And 
among  thousands,  who  do  not  openly  oppose  or  impugn  the 
methods  and  results  of  modern  knowledge,  there  is  an  un- 
easy feeling  that  its  tendencies  are  dangerous  to  religion; 
and  they  wonder  if  the  battle  now  raging  be  not  the  real 
Armageddon,  long  ago  foretold,  in  which  is  to  be  fought  out 
the  final  great  conflict  between  God  and  his  enemies.  It  is 
not  at  all  inconsistent  with  this  state  of  mind  that  these 
men  should  declare,  as  did  Mr.  Talmage  in  a  recent  lect- 
ure, "  There  is  no  contest  between  genuine  science  and  rev- 
elation." For,  with  these,  "  genuine  science  "  is  only  such 
science  as  does  not  conflict  with  their  view  of  revelation. 
In  this  way,  any  most  bitter  opponents  can  be  brought  into 
the  most  loving  harmony. 

But,  instead  of  ridiculing  or  denouncing  the  opposition  to 
science  of  these  old  instituted  religions,  it  is  more  important 
that  we  understand  it.  After  recognizing  the  facts,  if  we  can 
find  out  how  such  states  of  mind  came  to  be  facts,  we  shall 
then  be  ourselves  fitted  to  do  something  towards  bringing 
about  a  better  comprehension  of  the  real  relation  in  which 
science  stands  to  religion. 

At  the  outset,  then,  we  note  the  fact  that  most  of  the  lead- 
ing scholars  and  scientific  men  of  the  world  do  not  believe 
in  the  historic  creeds  of  the  popular  Church.  Now  and  then 
there  is  an  exception  in  the  case  of  a  scholar  whose  studies 
do  not  lead  him  on  to  controverted  ground ;  or  there  is  a 
scientific  man,  like  Faraday,  who,  as  if  he  were  handling  ex- 
plosive gases,  avowedly  keeps  his  science  and  his  religion 
carefully  apart  from  each  other.  But  the  general  statement 
is  true.  And  the  religious  leaders  naturally  infer  that,  in 
scientific  studies  that  lead  to  such  results,  there  must  be 
something  essentially  hostile  to  religion.  The  general  antag- 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science  163 

onism  seems  proved,  then,  by  patent  facts;  and,  when  we 
come  to  look  beneath  the  surface,  we  find  the  undercurrents 
of  spirit  and  method  to  be  sweeping  in  different  directions. 
Free  thought,  investigation,  doubt,  and  the  demand  for  proof, 
—  these  are  of  the  very  soul  of  science.  But  the  official 
exponents  of  religion  teach  that  the  first  step  towards  God  is 
a  childlike  spirit  of  belief,  the  unquestioning  acceptance  of 
what  is  unhesitatingly  taught.  The  New  Testament  declares 
that  "  he  that  believeth  and  is  baptized  shall  be  saved  ;  but 
he  that  believeth  not  shall  be  damned."  And  Thomas,  who 
did  nothing  worse  than  ask  proof  in  support  of  the  claim 
that  a  stupendous  miracle  had  been  wrought,  is  held  up  to 
peculiar  reprobation.  To-day,  we  should  reprobate  the  man 
who  was  so  credulous  as  to  do  anything  else.  It  is,  indeed, 
admitted  that  the  dogmas  of  religion  appear  to  be  incompat- 
ible with  reason.  Therefore,  reason  is  denounced ;  and  faith 
is  taught  as  a  superior  faculty,  that  is  able  to  grasp  facts  that 
are  above  reason.  Reason  and  faith,  therefore,  are  often 
regarded  as  polar  opposites.  Not  long  ago,  a  leading  eccle- 
siastic of  Boston  said  to  me  :  "  It  is  either  reason  or  faith. 
Were  it  not  for  my  faith  in  the  Church,  I  should  be  where 
you  are."  And  this  peculiar  "  faith  "  no  one  claims  to  be 
able  to  substantiate  by  the  scientific  method.  Popular  relig- 
ion decries  "  the  wisdom  of  this  world " ;  and  the  Prayer 
Book  asks  us  to  renounce  "  the  world  and  the  flesh,"  as  well 
as  "the  devil."  And,  in  common  religious  phraseology, 
there  is  a  "  God  of  this  world,"  who  is  supposed  to  be  the 
great  opponent  of  the  God  of  religion.  But  this  world  is 
the  sacred  text-book  of  all  scientific  study. 

Such,  then,  being  the  general  mutual  attitudes  of  science 
and  instituted  religion,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  majority  of 
preachers  regard  the  tendencies  of  modern  thought  with  sus- 
picion. It  is  not  strange  that  a  minister  should  privately 


164  My  Creed 

tell  a  friend  that  he  did  not  allow  himself  to  read  any  book 
that  threatened  to  disturb  his  belief.  I  remember  that,  when 
I  was  first  beginning  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  heretic,  one  of 
the  principal  charges  against  me  was  that  I  had  so  many 
scientific  books  in  my  library.  Out  of  such  study  no  good 
could  be  expected.  It  is  perfectly  natural  that  the  late  pope, 
Pius  IX.,  should  turn  the  artillery  of  the  Vatican  against 
modern  knowledge.  It  is  perfectly  natural  that  the  drift  of 
all  modern  literature,  and  that  the  influence  of  the  common 
schools,  should  be  looked  upon  with  alarm.  It  is  perfectly 
natural  that  professors  in  theological  seminaries  should  be 
driven  from  their  chairs  for  teaching  evolution. 

These  are  not  peculiarly  modern  facts.  Neither  are  they 
accidental.  The  long  warfare  of  the  Church  against  free 
thought  and  natural  knowledge  is  familiar  to  you  all.  To 
detail  it  would  be  to  review  church  history  for  the  last  eigh- 
teen hundred  years.  And  this,  as  I  have  said,  is  no  acci- 
dent. The  spirit  of  investigation  and  proof  seems  to  have 
been  as  utterly  foreign  to  the  mind  and  method  of  Jesus  as 
to  any  of  his  followers.  Indeed,  there  is  no  trace  of  it  in 
the  Bible  anywhere.  Throughout  the  Old  Testament,  it  is 
the  seer  and  the  oracle  that  are  looked  to  as  the  sources  of 
all  knowledge.  Indeed,  this  age-long  antagonism  appears  at 
the  very  beginning ;  for  the  primal  sin,  followed  by  the  pri- 
mal curse,  was  tasting  the  fruit  of  "  the  tree  of  knowledge." 
The  Elohim  seem  to  have  been  jealous  lest  "the  man  be- 
come as  one  of  us."  In  almost  all  the  great  religions,  the 
gods  are  easily  offended,  easily  made  jealous  of  man.  They 
look  with  suspicion  upon  his  attempts  to  become  wise  or  to 
better  his  physical  condition.  Utter  humility  and  prostra- 
tion, poverty  and  self-depreciation,  have  always  pleased 
them  better.  What  else  but  this  is  the  lesson  of  the  Pro- 
metheus myth?  Jove  is  angry  because  the  old  Titan  has 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science  165 

shown  pity  towards  the  abject  condition  of  the  despised 
human  race.  In  most  of  the  great  religions,  the  supreme 
gods  have  shown  themselves  friendly  towards  men,  if  at  all, 
only  through  some  mediator  or  intercessor.  For  some  rea- 
son or  other  there  is  almost  always  enmity.  The  search  for 
knowledge  and  the  attempt  to  produce  a  higher  worldly  civil- 
ization are  treated  as  impiety. 

Now,  for  a  fact  so  wide-spread  as  this  we  have  been  con- 
sidering, there  must  exist  some  equally  general  cause.  And 
this  cause,  it  seems  to  me,  is  not  very  far  to  seek.  It  would 
take  me  too  long  to  trace  the  processes  by  which  it  has  come 
about;  but,  in  perfectly  natural  ways,  it  has  come  to  pass 
that  God  has  been  set  over  against  matter  as  its  eternal 
opposite.  It  is  spirit  and  matter,  God  and  nature ;  and  the 
two  are  in  everlasting  contrast.  The  root  of  the  opposition 
is  in  the  philosophy  which  underlies  our  conceptions  of  both 
religion  and  science.  The  leaven  of  Manichaeism  still  works 
in  the  modern  world.  We  escaped  the  outright  dualism  of 
the  Avestan  faith.  Young  Christianity  was  wise  enough  to 
reject  the  extremest  folly  of  the  Gnostics,  who  held  to  an 
almost  impassable  gulf  between  God  and  the  world,  even 
denying  that  the  pure,  supreme  Spirit  could  have  conde- 
scended to  create  it  at  all.  But,  practically,  the  dominant 
Christian  philosophy  has  come  to  substantially  the  same 
thing.  God's  kingdom  has  not  been  treated  as  the  natural 
product,  the  consummate  flower,  of  this  world's  growth  in 
civilization.  Rather  is  it  true  that  this  world  has  been  re- 
garded as  alien  from  God,  an  opposing  kingdom,  in  revolt 
against  him,  separated  from  his  divine  life,  and  tending  ever- 
more to  deeper  degradation.  The  Christian  in  this  world  is 
in  an  enemy's  country :  he  must  fight  all  natural  tendencies, 
and  hold  himself  aloof  from  all  worldly  entanglements.  In 
this  way,  he  may  one  day  escape  from  the  prison-house  of 


1 66  My  Creed 

the  flesh,  and  be  received  into  God's  eternal  kingdom  of 
spirit.  God,  then,  is  outside  the  world  and  opposed  to  it. 
His  elect  ones  are  chosen  out  of  it ;  and,  when  the  process 
of  their  training,  through  temptation  and  sorrow,  is  com- 
pleted, he  will  burn  it  up.  Then  his  kingdom  of  spirit  will 
be  forever  separated  from  all  those  who  have  been  the  chil- 
dren of  this  rebellious  world. 

With  a  dominant  philosophy  like  this,  it  could  not  be 
otherwise  than  that  religion  should  find  an  apparent  enemy 
in  science.  Knowledge  of  a  ruined,  fallen,  accursed  world, 
a  world  at  enmity  with  God,  could  not  do  other  than  lead  its 
devotees  away  from  God.  And,  when  this  knowledge  began 
to  teach  doctrines  opposed  to  what  was  firmly  held  to  be  a 
supernatural  and  divine  revelation,  this  only  served  to  con- 
firm the  opinion  that  it  was  the  enemy  of  God.  Worldly 
wisdom  could  not  be  expected  to  discover  revealed  truths, 
and  it  was  not  competent  to  judge  them.  It  was  treated, 
therefore,  only  as  a  self-willed  refusal  of  rebellious  natures 
to  bow  to  righteous  and  just  authority. 

But  the  devotees  of  science  have  kept  on  their  humble, 
common-sense  way,  until  they  have  accumulated  so  vast  a 
body  of  verifiable  natural  knowledge  that  it  can  no  longer 
be  disregarded.  It  has  changed  the  face  of  the  earth,  and 
lifted  the  level  of  human  life.  However  it  may  have  dam- 
aged man's  prospects  for  the  next  world,  it  has  unspeakably 
benefited  this  one.  And,  at  the  same  time,  its  results  in 
the  realm  of  thought  have  been  such  that  the  old  religious 
beliefs  are  fast  fading  from  the  minds  of  intelligent  men. 
So  a  problem  faces  us.  What  does  the  attitude  of  the 
modern  world  mean  ?  Is  God  being  beaten  in  his  attempt 
to  govern  the  world  ?  Or  is  it  not  more  probable  that  his 
self-constituted  interpreters  have  mistaken  the  relation  in 
which  he  stands  to  it?  Is  it  not  just  possible  that  God  is 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science  167 

in  the  world,  not  outside  of  it  ?  and  that  he  is  leading  it  for- 
ward, not  fighting  against  its  progress  ?  This  seems  to  be, 
at  any  rate,  the  growing  conviction  of  the  grown-up  human- 
ity of  the  nineteenth  century.  And,  at  least,  it  may  be 
worth  looking  at  before  rejecting  it  in  the  interest  of  the 
childish  fancies  of  the  world's  ignorant  and  inexperienced 
childhood.  Let  us,  then,  look  a  little  at  this  matter  of  sci- 
ence, and  see  what  it  is. 

Since  Science  won  her  first  and  most  dramatic  triumphs 
on  the  fields  of  physical  research, —  such  as  astronomy,  geol- 
ogy, and  chemistry, —  there  is  a  feeling  in  the  popular  mind 
that  the  physical  is  her  peculiar  and  only  proper  sphere. 
And  certain  other  claimed  methods  of  knowledge  appear  to 
be  very  jealous  lest  she  should  get  out  of  this  sphere.  But 
she  has  already  asserted  her  right  of  eminent  domain  in  biol- 
ogy, in  anthropology,  in  sociology ;  and  she  already  promises 
to  bring  order  out  of  confusion  in  ethics,  and  is  beginning 
with  her  methods  to  explore  the  mysteries  of  religion.  And 
her  claim  is  nothing  less  than  "  Everything  or  nothing." 
Meantime,  the  other  so-called  methods  claim  to  be  able  to 
put  us  in  possession  of  certain  most  important  kinds  of 
knowledge  to  which  the  plodding  feet  of  Science  can  never 
lead.  They  have  turnpikes,  cross-cuts,  "  royal  roads  " ;  they 
soar  on  quick  wings,  while  Science,  like  a  grub,  only  burrows 
in  the  earth.  So  they  tell  us. 

Let  us  look,  then,  a  little  at  these  other  methods,  and  see 
if  their  claims  are  good.  Faith  is  one  of  these.  But  what 
is  faith?  As  very  commonly  used  it  is  only  credulity. 
Faith  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  questions  of  history, 
as  to  whether  such  or  such  a  thing  really  happened  at  some 
time  in  the  past.  That  is  a  question  of  evidence.  Neither 
can  faith  rightly  concern  itself  with  the  truth  or  falsity  of 
certain  dogmas  that  offer  themselves  for  belief.  All  true 


1 68  My  Creed 

faith  must  base  itself  on  and  spring  out  of  human  experi- 
ence. In  the  light  of  the  past,  and  following  the  trend  of 
what  has  been,  it  reaches  forward  beyond  the  visible,  and 
grasps  as  real  that  which  is  not  yet  seen.  It  finds  its  reason 
and  justification,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  only  in  science.  Su- 
pernatural revelation,  again,  claims  to  be  another  source  of 
knowledge.  But,  were  there  any  such  thing,  it  would  have 

—  before  it  could  be  cognizable  by  man  —  to  come  within 
the  range  of  and  submit  to  be  judged  by  human  experience. 
It  falls  definitely  within  the  scope,  then,  of  the  scientific 
method.     No  matter  what  its  source  or  nature,  it  can  reach 
and  touch  man  only  as  it  becomes  a  fact  in  his  experience ; 
and,  as  such,  it  must  be  dealt  with.     So  far  as  it  transcends 
experience,  it  is  outside  of  and  beyond  our  range,  and  so  far 
unknown ;  and,  if  we  are  to  accept  its  credentials,  they  must 
be  submitted  to  us  for  examination  and  verification.     Super- 
natural  revelation   itself,   then,    must  submit   itself  to   the 
scientific  method  before  it  can  be  of  any  use  to  us.     Another 
supposed  source  of  knowledge  is  intuition,  the  quality  or 
gift  of   the  seer,  the  direct  insight  of  supersensible  truth. 
But,  so  far  as  intuition  is  real,  Science  adopts  and  explains 
it,  making  easy  room  for  it  as  one  form  of  the  first  step  in 
her  own  true  and  only  method  of  knowledge. 

As  a  concrete  illustration  of  what  I  mean,  let  us  take  him 
who  is  regarded  as  the  greatest  seer  of  our  modern  world, 

—  our  Emerson.     He  says,  "  I  see :  the  truth  looks  to  me 
so  and  so."     But  he  positively  disclaims  argument  or  proof. 
What,  then,  is  this  seeing  of  his  ?     No  matter  that  he  uses 
the  "  mind's  eye  "  instead  of  the  physical  organ  of  vision, 
his   seeing  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  observation,  the 
first  step  in  the  scientific  method.     And  no  matter  how  true 
or  grand  his  seeing,  just  because  he  does  not  take  the  other 
steps  of  the  process  of  science,  his  seeing  is  wholly  useless 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science  169 

to  me,  unless  I  also  can  see  the  same.  Suppose  I  say,  "  I 
see  a  mast  far  oil  on  the  edge  of  the  horizon  at  sea."  But 
you  are  short-sighted,  and  do  not  see  it.  You  have,  then, 
only  my  bare  word  for  it ;  and  it  is  open  to  you  to  suppose 
it  only  a  fancy  on  my  part,  or  traceable  to  some  defect  in  my 
own  vision.  So  this  kind  of  seership  is  grounded  only  on 
personal  authority,  and  there  is  no  way  of  making  it  certain 
to  one  who  is  inclined  to  doubt.  This  kind  of  wisdom  is 
non-transferable.  And,  the  minute  you  take  steps  to  prove 
it,  you  do  it,  and  must  do  it,  by  going  on  to  complete  the 
processes  of  the  scientific  method.  So  of  philosophy  :  it  is 
not  an  independent  method  or  source  of  knowledge,  and  it 
is  valid  only  as  it  uses  scientifically  ascertained  truths  as  its 
subject-matter,  and  deals  with  them  in  accordance  with  the 
scientific  method. 

To  make  clear  and  to  substantiate  these  points,  let  us 
turn  to,  and  note  carefully  what  we  mean  by,  the  scientific 
method.  It  consists  of  three  steps  or  processes:  i.  Obser- 
vation ;  2.  Hypothesis ;  3.  Verification  by  fresh  and  re- 
peated observation  and  experiment.  If  we  take  only  the 
first  step, —  observation,  or  looking, —  what  we  think  we  see 
may  be  only  an  illusion,  a  partial  or  erroneous  impression, 
due  to  some  carelessness  on  our  part  or  to  some  personal 
defect.  It  is  only  when  we  have  corrected  and  verified  our 
impressions  by  repeated  experiment  that  we  can  be  reason- 
ably sure  of  what  we  call  knowledge;  for  most  of  our  first 
impressions  are  more  or  less  erroneous.  The  very  first  ob- 
servation may  be  correct  and  complete ;  but  on  that  basis 
alone  we  can  never  be  sure  of  it. 

The  thing  we  claim  to  see  by  faith  or  intuition,  the  thing 
that  philosophy  or  revelation  claims  to  bring  before  us  as 
real, —  this  thing  may  be  real;  but  we  can  never  thus  be 
certain  of  it.  We  have  no  right  to  call  it  knowledge  until 


I/O  My  Creed 

we  have  subjected  it  to  renewed  experiment,  and  have  veri- 
fied it.  In  this  way,  and  in  this  way  only,  can  we  prove 
that  it  is  not  due  to  some  subjective  illusion  or  to  some 
personal  peculiarity  or  defect  of  observation. 

And  the  distinction  which  is  commonly  set  up  between 
so-called  physical  knowledge,  to  which  the  scientific  method 
is  appropriate,  and  another  so-called  spiritual  knowledge 
that  transcends  the  scientific  method,  is  wholly  unreal  and 
illusory.  Whatever  does  not  come  within  the  range  of  man, 
whatever  does  not  touch  or  modify  human  life  in  any  way, 
is  as  if  it  were  non-existent,  and  does  not  concern  us  one 
way  or  another.  But  whatever  does  come  within  our  range, 
whatever  does  touch  us,  whatever  modifies  our  lives  in  any 
way  or  to  any  degree,  this, —  whether  it  is  physical  or  men- 
tal or  spiritual, —  by  the  very  fact  that  it  touches  us  and  so 
concerns  us,  is  proved  to  be  within  our  reach.  For,  were  it 
not  within  our  reach,  it  would  not  touch  or  concern  us. 
Since,  therefore,  it  does  touch  us, —  and  is  therefore  shown 
to  be  within  our  reach, —  we  can  observe  it,  test  it,  and 
verify  it.  No  matter  whether  the  observation  be  with  the 
physical,  the  mental,  or  the  spiritual  eye,  if  it  is  reality, 
and  we  do  really  discern  it,  then  this  discerning  is  only 
another  name  for  observation,  the  first  step  in  the  scientific 
method. 

All  reality  then,  all  that  touches  and  so  concerns  man, — 
whether  on  earth  or  in  the  heavens  above  or  in  the  depths 
beneath,  whether  it  be  memories  or  records  of  the  past  or 
fears  or  hopes  of  the  future, —  all  reality  is  within  the  scope 
of  the  scientific  method ;  and  whatever  can  be  known  about 
it  can  be  known  in  this  way,  and  only  in  this  way.  For  until 
that  which  claims  to  be  true  is  verified  by  fresh  observation 
and  experiment,  while  it  may  or  may  not  be  true,  it  is  only 
belief  or  opinion  :  it  cannot  be  knowledge. 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science  171 

Since,  therefore,  the  scientific  method  is  the  only  method 
of  knowledge,  Religion  must  adopt  it  and  make  it  her  own 
before  she  can  make  theology — what  it  some  day  will  be  — 
the  science  of  sciences.  In  that  day,  Religion  will  be  the 
queen  of  the  world,  and  Science  will  be  her  prime  minister. 

It  has  been  needful  for  us  to  take  so  much  time  in  clear- 
ing up  the  misconceptions  concerning  science  and  its  rela- 
tion to  religious  knowledge.  But  since  religion  is  the 
dominant  reality  of  human  life,  and  therefore  cannot  be 
harmed,  but  only  helped,  by  the  fullest  light  and  knowledge, 
we  shall  find  it  true  that  Science  has  been  helping  religion 
all  along.  Her  services  are  not  all  in  the  future :  some  of 
the  grandest  of  them  are  in  the  past.  While  the  mistrustful 
advocates  of  religion  have  been  looking  askance  at  science, 
and  mistaking  it  for  an  enemy,  this  unrecognized  knight, 
"with  the  strange  device"  on  his  shield,  has  entered  the 
lists,  and  unhorsed  a  multitude  of  the  foes  of  God  and  man. 
And,  as  his  visor  is  lifted,  we  look  upon  the  face  of  a  cham- 
pion whose  countenance  gleams  with  God's  light,  and  whose 
arm  wields  the  weapons  of  eternal  truth,  forged  in  the  very 
workshops  of  the  Almighty. 

In  justification  of  this  position,  I  propose  now  to  call  your 
attention  to  some  items  of  the  debt  of  Religion  to  Science. 

i.  Science  has  revealed  to  us  a  universe  fit  to  be  the  gar- 
ment of  an  infinite  God. 

However  crude  their  thought,  men  have  always  had  some 
sort  of  notion  of  the  world  about  them,  of  the  gods  or  god 
residing  in  and  controlling  the  heavens  and  the  earth ;  they 
have  had  some  notion  of  their  own  natures,  and  of  the  rela- 
tion in  which  they  stood  to  these  external  and  superior 
powers.  And  their  theology  has  always  been  their  theory 
of  these  relations.  All  religions,  then,  root  themselves  in, 
spring  out  of,  and  are  shaped  by  some  cosmology,  or  theory 


172  My  Creed 

of  things.  And  the  religion  can  be  no  grander  or  more 
worthy  than  the  cosmology.  A  grand  religion,  then,  must 
be  housed  in  a  grand  conception  of  the  universe.  For  an 
Infinite  God  there  must  be  an  infinite  home. 

I  need  not  describe  in  detail  the  childish  conceptions 
which  the  childhood  world  entertained  concerning  its  dwell- 
ing-place ;  for  you  are  familiar  with  them.  They  were  the 
natural  fancies  of  barbaric  people.  A  little  flat  world,  with 
as  many  fancied  centres  as  there  were  nations,  with  a  lim- 
ited heaven  close  by,  the  home  of  its  peculiar  gods :  —  it  is 
only  fanciful  variations  of  the  same  general  plan. 

The  heaven  and  earth  of  Hebrew  tradition,  which  after 
ages  consecrated  as  part  of  a  supposed  divine  revelation, 
was  shaped  almost  precisely  after  the  pattern  of  a  modern 
Saratoga  trunk.  The  surface  of  the  earth  was  its  floor;  and 
the  sun,  moon,  and  stars  were  attached  to  the  underside  of 
a  concave  dome,  which  would  answer  to  the  cover.  Beyond 
it  on  all  sides  was  the  primeval  chaos.  Heaven,  the  home 
of  God  and  his  angels,  was  above  the  dome.  The  Church 
added  to  this  conception  a  cavernous  hell  beneath, —  a  sort 
of  false  bottom  for  this  trunk, —  and  thus  completed  the 
structure  of  the  universe  as  it  was  popularly  held,  down  even 
to  mediaeval  times. 

The  Ptolemaic  astronomers  imagined  all  sorts  of  clumsy 
contrivances  in  their  vain  attempts  to  account  for  the  move- 
ments of  the  heavenly  bodies.  Their  sky  dome  was 

"  With  centric  and  eccentric  scribbled  o'er, 
Cycle  and  epicycle,  orb  in  orb." 

But  so  unsatisfactory  was  the  arrangement,  after  all,  that  the 
acutest  human  intellects  came  to  regard  it  as  altogether  un- 
worthy of  a  divine  contriver.  Prince  Alphonso  of  Castile 
said  that,  had  he  been  present  at  the  creation,  he  could  have 
suggested  a  much  better  plan. 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science  173 

Thus,  Religion  not  only  labored  under  the  burden  of  such 
clumsy  contrivances,  but  her  official  representatives  fought 
bitterly,  and  for  ages,  against  a  nobler  and  more  worthy  con- 
ception. But,  against  all  opposition,  Science  persisted  ;  and, 
at  last,  the  walls  of  space  gave  way,  the  solid  dome  became 
the  boundless  expanse  of  air,  the  earth  was  seen  "  dancing 
about  the  sun,"  and  our  solar  system  took  its  place  as  one 
in  the  ordered  maze  of  countless  galaxies  of  worlds. 

At  last,  then,  we  have  a  universe-house  large  enough  for  a 
God,  the  outlines  of  a  temple  fit  to  be  the  seat  of  a  worship 
to  match  the  boundless  aspirations  of  the  human  soul.  And 
this,  in  every  part,  is  the  work  of  science.  And  science  has 
achieved  it,  not  only  in  spite  of  instituted  and  official  relig- 
ion, but  for  the  sake  of  religion ;  that  is,  science  has  given 
to  religion  a  temple,  one  "that  hath  foundations,  whose 
builder  and  maker  is  God." 

2.  But  not  only  has  science  revealed  to  religion  an  infinite 
universe  :  it  has  established  beyond  question  the  fact  that  it 
is  a  universe.  It  is  not  a  chaos,  but  an  orderly  unity. 

With  the  old  conception  of  the  universe,  it  was  easy 
enough  to  believe  in  two  gods  or  a  thousand.  No  system, 
no  unity,  was  discovered ;  and  the  Titanic  forces  seemed  to 
be  in  everlasting  conflict.  Light  fought  the  darkness,  sum- 
mer contended  with  winter ;  while  cloud,  wind,  lightning, — 
all  appeared  to  be  the  gigantic  play  of  separate  or  hostile 
powers.  Religion  gave  in  her  adhesion  to  some  one  deity, 
but  was  never  quite  sure  but  that  the  object  of  her  worship 
might  be  some  day  dethroned,  as  Jupiter  dethroned  Saturn, 
by  some  other  supernal  king. 

But,  when  Newton  demonstrated  the  iaw  of  gravitation, 
the  universe,  from  dust  grain  to  Sinus,  was  seen  to  be  held 
in  the  grasp  of  one  almighty  power.  Then  came  the  proof 
that  all  the  different  forces  of  the  universe  were  only  dif- 


174  My  Creed 


ferent  manifestations  of  one  eternal  force  that  never  was  less 
or  more.  And,  at  last,  the  spectroscope  has  revealed  the 
wondrous  fact  that  the  dust  beneath  our  feet  is  of  the  same 
material  as  that  of  which  the  glittering  suns  are  made. 

It  is,  indeed,  true  that  Religion  declared,  ages  ago,  "  The 
Lord  our  God  is  one  Lord  !  "  But,  all  the  same,  a  hundred 
other  religions  had  their  "  gods  many  and  lords  many  "  ; 
and  no  one  was  able  to  do  more  than  assert  the  nothingness 
of  all  but  one.  But,  at  last,  science  has  demonstrated 

"  One  law,  one  element," 

and  has  made  it  reasonable  for  us  to  complete  the  line,  and 
make  it  read,  — 

"  One  God,  one  law,  one  element." 

It  is  one  force  everywhere  ;  and,  if  God  be  at  all,  he  is  now 
known  to  be  only  one.  And  this  result  of  knowledge  is  the 
magnificent  gift  to  religion  of  science.  The  glory  belongs 
to  science,  and  to  science  alone. 

3.  Not  only  is  the  infinite  oneness  demonstrated,  but,  as 
already  hinted,  —  though  I  wish  to  set  the  point  apart,  and 
mark  it  off  by  itself,  —  an  infinite  order  is  also  revealed  ; 
and  so  we  find  it  rational  to  believe  in  an  infinite  wisdom. 

Of  course,  it  is  but  a  small  part  of  the  universe  that  has 
been  explored  ;  and  even  that  can  be  said  to  be  but  partially 
known.  But  every  step  so  far  taken  reveals  an  intelligible 
order.  And,  since  our  judgments  are  based  upon  experience, 
and  each  new  experience  reaffirms  and  deepens  the  one  im- 
pression, the  conviction  is  a  cumulative  one.  All  the  known, 
then,  being  orderly,  we  feel  an  unshaken  confidence  that 
whatever  seems  chaotic  or  unwise  bears  that  appearance  to 
us  only  because  it  is  not  better  known. 

Here,  again,  as  in  regard  to  the  oneness,  though  the  relig- 
ious heart  might  trust  and  hope,  it  is  only  Science  that  has 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science  175 

bestowed  upon  Religion  the  power  to  demonstrate  her  mag- 
nificent faith. 

4.  And,  once  more,  this  order  that  science  has  revealed  is 
not  a  fixed  and  finished  order,  so  that  we  may  not  hope  for 
anything  better  than  that  which  is  already  seen.  It  is  rather 
evolution,  an  orderly  progress,  the  apparent  on-reaching  of  a 
purpose ;  and  so  it  becomes  rational  for  us  to  cherish  any 
grandest  hope  as  being  within  the  scope  of  possibility. 

Against  the  old  universe,  as  a  fixed  and  finished  piece  of 
mechanism,  wrought  by  the  hand  of  a  supernatural  con- 
triver, certain  very  grave  and  insuperable  objections  could 
be  brought.  It  seems  to  me  that,  on  that  theory,  the  serious 
criticisms  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  for  example,  cannot  be  met. 
The  God  of  this  universe, —  regarding  it  as  a  finality, —  Mr. 
Mill  thinks,  cannot  be  both  perfectly  good  and  perfectly 
powerful  at  the  same  time.  Either  he  does  not  wish  to  make 
things  better — and,  in  that  case,  is  not  completely  benevo- 
lent—  or  else  he  cannot  make  them  better;  and  so  either 
his  wisdom  or  his  power  is  impeached. 

But  the  fact  of  evolution,  the  establishment  of  which  is 
unspeakably  the  grandest  of  all  the  achievements  of  science, 
completely  flanks  this  whole  class  of  objections,  and  so  gives 
to  Religion  a  firm  basis  for  her  noblest  trust.  Since  all 
these  things  are  in  process,  reaching  forth  toward  some 
result  as  yet  but  dimly  seen,  it  were  as  illogical  to  condemn 
them  for  present  imperfections  as  it  would  be  to  judge  the 
quality  of  an  apple  that  ripens  only  in  October  by  tasting  its 
puckery  bitterness  in  July.  Such  judgment  is  as  unscientific 
as  it  is  irreligious.  We  are,  then,  scientifically  justified  in 
singing  one  verse,  at  least,  of  the  old  hymn  of  Cowper :  — 

"  His  purposes  will  ripen  fast, 

Unfolding  evtry  hour : 
The  bud  may  have  a  bitter  taste, 
But  sweet  will  be  the  flower." 


176  My  Creed 

And,  though  the  old  watch-maker  type  of  design  may  be 
discredited,  a  broader,  grander,  farther-reaching  teleology  is 
revealed.  Taking  in  the  wider  sweep  of  things ;  considering 
the  growth  of  a  system  from  star-dust  to  planet ;  noting  the 
upward  trend  of  life  from  protozoon  to  man,  and,  within  the 
human  range,  from  animal  to  soul ;  seeing  how, 

"  Striving  to  be  man,  the  worm 
Mounts  through  all  the  spires  of  form," — 

in  this  larger  survey,  we  are  taking  no  unjustifiable  liberty 
with  the  facts  when  we  chant  our  trust  in  the  words  of  Ten- 
nyson,— 

"  Yet  I  doubt  not  through  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs." 

Within  this  generation  then,  for  the  first  time  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world,  Religion  is  able  to  feel  beneath  the  feet 
of  her  faith  in  "the  eternal  goodness"  the  firm  ground  of 
demonstration.  And  this  is  the  gift  of  Science. 

5.  Still  another  gift  of  Science  to  Religion  is  nothing  less 
than  what  is  essentially  a  spiritualistic  conception  of  the  uni- 
verse. There  is  a  sort  of  grim  irony  in  the  fact  that,  while 
Religion  has  always  been  stigmatizing  Science  as  material- 
istic, she  herself  has  never  been  able  to  demonstrate  the 
opposite  of  materialism,  and  has  had  to  wait  for  Science  to 
do  it  for  her.  For  it  is  Science,  at  last,  that  has  dealt  mate- 
rialism its  death-blow,  and  made  it  reasonable  for  us  to  be- 
lieve that  the  world  is  only  the  bright  and  changing  garment 
of  the  living  God.  Religion  has  disbelieved  and  denounced 
materialism  for  ages ;  but,  all  the  while,  she  has  been  haunted 
by  it,  as  by  a  ghost  which  all  her  conjurations  could  not  lay. 
But  Science  has  now  demonstrated  its  utter  incompetence 
as  a  theory  for  the  explanation  of  the  universe.  A  theory  is 
accepted  as  valid  by  as  much  as  it  can  account  for  the  facts. 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science  177 

The  most  important,  the  crucial  fact  with  which  we  have  to 
deal  is  conscious  thought ;  and,  in  the  face  of  this,  material- 
ism has  utterly  broken  down.  On  this  point,  I  wish  to  let 
the  great  voices  of  the  scientific  world  be  heard  for  them- 
selves. 

In  his  address  on  "  Scientific  Materialism  "  (Fragments  of 
Science,  p.  120),  Mr.  Tyndall  expresses  the  opinion  that  the 
materialist  has  a  right  to  assert  an  intimate  relation  between 
thought  and  certain  molecular  motions  in  the  brain.  Then 
he  adds :  "  I  do  not  think  he  is  entitled  to  say  that  his  mo- 
lecular groupings  and  his  molecular  motions  explain  every- 
thing. In  reality,  they  explain  nothing.  .  .  .  The  problem  of 
the  connection  of  body  and  soul  is  as  insoluble  in  its  modern 
form  as  it  was  in  the  pre-scientific  ages." 

Mr.  Huxley,  in  treating  of  "  Bishop  Berkeley  on  the  Meta- 
physics of  Sensation"  (Critiques  and  Addresses,  p.  314), 
declares,  "If  I  were  obliged  to  choose  between  absolute 
materialism  and  absolute  idealism,  I  should  feel  compelled 
to  accept  the  latter  alternative." 

Instead  of  quoting  long  passages  on  this  point  from  Mr. 
Spencer,  I  choose  rather  to  give  Mr.  Fiske's  summing  up  of 
his  general  position.  He  says,  "  Mr.  Spencer  has  most  con- 
clusively demonstrated  that,  from  the  scientific  point  of  view, 
the  hypothesis  of  the  materialists  is  not  only  as  untenable 
to-day  as  it  ever  has  been,  but  must  always  remain  inferior 
in  philosophic  value  to  the  opposing  spiritualistic  hypothesis  " 
(Cosmic  Philosophy,  vol.  ii.,  p.  436). 

And  his  own  position  Mr.  Fiske  sums  up  in  these  brief 
words :  "  Henceforth,  we  may  regard  materialism  as  ruled 
out,  and  relegated  to  that  limbo  of  crudities  to  which  we, 
some  time  since,  consigned  the  hypothesis  of  special  crea- 
tions "  (Cosmic  Philosophy,  vol.  ii.,  p.  445). 

It  is  no  part  of  my  purpose  to  trace  the  processes  of  scien- 


178  My  Creed 

tific  reasoning  by  which  this  end  has  been  attained.  I  only 
wish  to  note  the  fact,  and  to  help  honest  religious  thinkers 
to  see  and  be  grateful  for  the  gifts  of  science.  Materialism, 
then,  is  gone  by.  Henceforth,  Religion  may  gladly  look 
upon  all  the  fair,  the  magnificent,  the  terrible  forms  of  mat- 
ter as  only  veils  that,  while  they  conceal,  do  still  more  reveal 
the  features,  the  outlines,  and  the  movements  of  the  Infinite 
Life  that  they  only  clothe  and  manifest. 

6.  As  Science  holds  us  by  the  hand,  I  think  I  may  safely 
say  that  she  leads  us  one  step  further  into  the  heart  of  this 
grand  mystery. 

The  form  behind  and  manifested  in  and  through  what  we 
call  matter  is  really  spirit,  we  say.  But  that  is  not  enough 
for  Religion.  To  be  —  in  the  words  of  Spencer — "ever  in 
presence  of  an  Infinite  and  Eternal  Energy,  from  which  all 
things  proceed,"  this  is  grand  and  wonderful.  But  Religion 
has  dared  to  hope  that  this  infinite  power  was  Father  and 
Friend.  And  now,  if  Herbert  Spencer  may  be  allowed  to 
speak  for  her,  Science  asserts,  at  least,  demonstrable  kinship 
between  the  human  soul  and  this  "Infinite  and  Eternal 
Energy."  These  are  Mr.  Spencer's  words  :  "The  final  out- 
come of  that  speculation  commenced  by  the  primitive  man 
is  that  the  Power  manifested  throughout  the  universe  distin- 
guished as  material  is  the  same  power  which  in  ourselves 
wells  up  under  the  form  of  consciousness "  (Religion :  A 
Retrospect  and  Prospect). 

And,  with  more  elaboration  and  in  greater  detail,  the  Rev. 
F.  E.  Abbot  (Scientific  Theism,  p.  209)  asserts  of  the  universe, 
as  the  direct  teaching  and  final  result  of  science,  that,  "  be- 
cause, as  an  infinite  organism,  it  thus  manifests  infinite  Wis- 
dom, Power,  and  Goodness,  or  thought,  feeling,  and  will  in 
their  infinite  fulness,  and  because  these  three  constitute  the 
essential  manifestations  of  personality,  it "  —  the  universe  — 


The  Debt  of  Religion  to  Science  1 79 

"  must  be  conceived  as  Infinite  Person,  Absolute  Spirit,  Crea- 
tive Source,  and  Eternal  Home  of  the  derivative  finite  per- 
sonalities which  depend  upon  it,  but  are  no  less  real  than 
itself." 
Thus  have  the  patient  feet  of  Science  led  the  way  to  the 

heights, 

"...  through  nature  up  to  nature's  God." 

Such  and  so  magnificent  are  her  gifts  to  Religion. 

7.  But  the  catalogue  of  her  services  is  not  yet  ended. 
Still  the  work  goes  on.     For  it  is  her  spirit  and  method  that 
are  scattering  the  clouds  of  superstition  and  inhuman  the- 
ology, the  still  lingering  remnants  of  the  primeval  darkness 
that  once  overhung  the  whole  earth,  so  helping  religion  to 
break,  like  a  sun,  through  the  noxious  vapors,  and  illumine 
the  world. 

Those  who  are  committed  to  the  impossible  task  of  identi- 
fying with  religion  dogmas  and  customs  that  cannot  bear  the 
light  may  well  be  jealous  of  Science  and  her  work.  For 
just  so  certainly  as  she  is  of  the  race  of  the  immortals,  so 
certainly  they  must  die.  It  is  the  old  battle  between  Apollo 
and  the  dragons ;  and  the  issue  is  not  uncertain.  But  it  is 
for  us,  as  Unitarians,  to  accept  without  reserve  the  method 
of  Science,  which  is  the  only  method  of  knowledge.  Then, 
though  in  ever  so  hopeless  a  minority  to-day,  our  leadership 
of  the  world's  religious  future  is  assured.  Science  can  de- 
stroy only  God's  enemies  and  ours  ;  for  she  is  the  very  leader 
of  the  divine  armies  of  light  and  truth. 

8.  One  more  point  I  wish  to  set  down,  not  as  an  achieve- 
ment, but  as  a  hope,  if  not  a  prophecy.     I  dare  to  believe 
that  some  day  this  same  science  will  discover  immortality. 
However  firmly  we  may  believe,  we  cannot  yet  say  we  know. 
I  am  aware  that  many  have  no  question,  and  say  they  care 
for  no  more  proof.     But,  when  any  man  says,  "I  know,"  — 


i8o  My  Creed 

unless  he  is  in  possession  of  facts  not  generally  recognized, — 
the  utmost  that  he  can  honestly  mean  is  that  he  feels  a 
very  strong  assurance.  I,  too,  believe  :  — 

I  cannot  think  the  world  shall  end  in  naught, 
That  the  abyss  shall  be  the  grave  of  thought, — 

That  e'er  oblivion's  shoreless  sea  shall  roll 
O'er  love  and  wonder  and  the  lifeless  soul. 

Neither  have  I  any  prying  curiosity  as  to  the  details  of  that 
other  life.  But,  in  regard  to  the  simple  fact,  I  should  like 
to  feel  beneath  my  feet  the  solid  rock  of  demonstration. 
For  could  we  not  all  bear  with  bravery  and  patience  the  in- 
cidents of  a  journey  that  leads  to  such  an  issue  ? 

Now,  if  this  other  life  be  a  fact,  and  if  its  realities  be  not 
far  away,  if  its  activities  press  close  upon  us  and  mingle 
themselves  with  our  daily  lives,  I  see  nothing  unreasonable 
in  supposing  that  one  day  this  may  be  demonstrated  to  the 
satisfaction  of  all  candid  men.  Such,  at  least,  is  my  hope. 

These,  then,  are  some  items  in  the  debt  of  Religion  to 
Science.  Religion  is  man's  search  after  right  relations  to 
God  and  to  his  fellow-man.  Science,  distrusted  so  long,  is 
found  to  be  the  unfallen  Lucifer,  the  light-bearer,  God's  very 
archangel,  come  to  guide  Religion  into  the  discovery  of 
these  relations.  Let  them  hereafter  work  hand  in  hand  in 
completing  the  foundations  and  rearing  the  homes  and  tem- 
ples of  the  city  of  God,  which  is  the  city  of  a  perfected 
humanity. 


Immortality  and  Modern  Thought. 


THE  wise  student  will  be  very  cautious  in  his  statements 
about  the  primitive  man.  He  has  never  been  seen  or  stud- 
ied. What  he  thought,  said  or  did,  is  therefore  subject-mat- 
ter for  guessing,  but  not  for  knowledge.  Scientific  faith  can 
resurrect  what  may  be  his  semblance ;  but  the  accuracy  of 
the  portrait  can  always  be  impeached. 

It  is  said  that  an  Englishman  and  a  Yankee  were  once 
discussing  the  relative  antiquity  of  their  respective  families. 
The  Englishman  declared  that  he  could  trace  his  to  a  noble- 
man who  came  over  with  the  Conqueror,  and  that  there  was 
little  doubt  that  this  nobleman's  ancestral  line  ran  back  to 
the  Caesars.  But  the  Yankee,  with  a  modesty  that  occasion- 
ally manifests  itself  in  disputes  of  this  kind,  quietly  remarked 
that  he  had  at  home  the  genealogical  table  of  his  family ;  and 
that,  somewhere  well  down  the  margin,  there  was  a  note  to 
the  effect  that  "  at  about  this  time  the  world  was  created.'' 
I  suppose  that  no  scholar,  to-day,  disputes  the  fact  that  even 
the  humblest  of  us  can  now  trace  his  ancestry  so  far  back 
that,  in  comparison  with  its  dim  antiquity,  the  ark  of  Noah 
must  be  looked  upon  as  quite  a  modern  vessel.  But,  even 
then,  the  primitive  man,  so  far  from  being  historical,  is  not 
even  a  tradition  or  a  myth  ;  for  even  the  traditions  and 
myths  that  gather  about  the  idea  of  the  fancied  "  beginning  " 
are  moulded  very  largely  on  the  patterns  of  the  times  that 
produced  them. 


1 82  My  Creed 

I  thus  emphasize  this  point  to  make  clear  how  ill-founded 
is  any  loose  talk  about  the  primitive  man's  thoughts  on  the 
subject  of  a  future  life.  The  earliest  man  of  whose  thoughts 
on  any  subject  we  possess  any  reliable  information  is  rela- 
tively well  on  towards  the  modern  age ;  for  an  authority  like 
Prof.  Marsh,  of  Yale,  tells  us  that  two  hundred  thousand 
years  is  a  moderate  estimate  of  the  time  that  has  elapsed 
since  the  first  human  consciousness  dawned  upon  what  until 
then  had  been  only  an  animal  world.  And,  in  comparison 
with  this,  the  Pyramids  are  of  yesterday. 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  there  are  races  of  men  still  alive, 
—  open  books  for  our  study, —  whose  type  of  thought  is 
older  than  the  hoariest  of  Egyptian  antiquities.  But  even 
the  slowest  on  the  road  have  marched  on  to  a  point  very  far 
this  side  of  the  twilight  that  hides  the  early  morning  of  the 
world. 

I  have  made  all  this  very  plain,  because  I  regard  the 
statement  I  am  about  to  make  as  so  very  important  that  I 
do  not  wish  it  weakened  by  even  an  appearance  of  claiming 
for  it  more  than  is  really  its  due.  This  statement  is  that  a 
belief  in  continued  personal  existence  after  death  seems  to 
be  not  so  much  an  invention  or  discovery  as  it  does  an  origi- 
nal endowment  and  integral  part  of  man.  I  say  seems, 
because,  beyond  the  farthest  point  we  can  reach  in  our  back- 
ward investigations,  we  have  only  inference  as  our  guide. 
But,  as  far  back  as  we  can  go,  we  find  the  belief  universal, 
and  bearing  even  then  no  traces  of  being  a  parvenu.  What- 
ever disputes  there  may  be  among  scholars  as  to  the  antiq- 
uity or  universality  of  any  theistic  faith,  or  anything  that 
can  properly  be  called  religion,  I  think  there  is  no  question 
about  this.  What  I  regard  as  the  proof  significance  of  it 
will  be  treated  later  on.  At  present,  I  wish  only  to  mark 
the  fact.  Man,  as  we  know  him,  has  never  seemed  able  to 


Immortality  and  Modern  Thought  183 

think  of  death  as  a  limit  to  his  conscious  existence.  He  has 
always  treated  the  grave  as  an  incident  in  his  career,  not  as 
the  end  of  it.  Death,  treated  as  an  end,  is  a  modern  inven- 
tion. Who  knows  but  it  ought  to  be  regarded  and  treated 
as  one  of  the  diseases  of  progress?  We  have  learned  a 
thousand  new  facts  about  the  universe ;  and  we  have  built 
up  new  theories  on  the  basis  of  our  facts.  And,  because 
the  facts  yet  known  are  not  large  enough  for  our  human 
dreams,  some  wise  men  are  in  haste  to  strangle  the  dreams. 
Possibly,  it  would  be  quite  as  wise  to  wait  a  little,  and  see  if 
there  are  not  more  facts  yet  out  of  which  we  may  build  an 
addition  to  our  universe,  so  making  it  large  enough  to  fur- 
nish a  home  even  for  so  great  a  thing  as  a  soul. 

That  we  may  feel  anew  how  large  a  part  of  human  life 
has  been  that  which  lies  beyond  the  death  limit,  I  wish  to 
recall  to  you  briefly  a  few  things  that  you  all  well  know. 
The  very  fact  that  we  are  accustomed  to  charge  the  entire 
past  of  human  history  with  excessive  other-worldliness  only 
emphasizes  the  point  we  have  in  hand. 

Any  one  who  makes  a  study  of  the  barbaric  races  will  be 
struck  by  this,  as  perhaps  the  most  significant  fact  about 
them, —  that  their  whole  life  is  a  tyranny,  dominated  by  the 
spirits  of  the  dead.  You  may  call  it  a  degrading  supersti- 
tion, an  over-belief,  or  what  you  will ;  but  the  fact  remains. 
And  it  is  the  fact  that  now  concerns  us.  In  birth  and  in 
death,  in  all  that  concerns  personal,  family  or  tribal  life,  it 
is  the  dead  who  rule.  Whatever  religion  there  is,  is  a  relig- 
ion of  the  dead.  Whatever  morality  exists,  the  dead  ones 
confirm  it  or  suspend  it,  as  they  will.  The  history  of  these 
peoples  might  appropriately  be  written  under  the  title  of 
"  The  Reign  of  the  Dead." 

If  we  pass  on  to  consider  the  first  great  civilizations  of  the 
world,  like  that  of  ancient  Egypt,  the  same  striking  fact 


184  My  Creed 

confronts  us.  It  has  developed  and  changed  its  form,  but  it 
remains  no  less  dominant  than  before.  So  true  is  this  that 
the  Egyptian  hardly  began  to  live  before  he  began  to  get 
ready  to  die.  The  king  fought  his  battles  and  sat  on  his 
throne  by  the  help  of  the  dead.  The  monuments  that  have 
astonished  the  world,  and  so  long  looked  calmly  in  the  face 
of  all-devouring  time,  are  the  monuments  of  the  dead.  The 
flowers  that,  pressed  and  faded,  look,  after  two  and  a  half 
thousands  years  of  mummy  companionship,  as  if  plucked  and 
laid  away  last  summer,  are  the  tributes  to  the  dead.  The 
literature  that  remains,  lighted  with  hope  of  the  future,  with 
tender  trust  in  the  gods,  and  tender  love  for  the  departed, 
is  The  Book  of  the  Dead. 

The  facts  concerning  the  other  great  Oriental  civilizations, 
of  India  and  China,  are  so  similar  to  these  that  I  need  only 
instance  them  thus,  and  pass  them  by. 

And  when  we  come  down  to  more  modern  times  still,  to 
Greece  and  Rome,  how  is  it  ?  They  had  begun,  in  certain 
limited  ways,  to  conquer  and  utilize  the  forces  of  this  world, 
so  as  to  make  it  a  somewhat  more  attractive  place  for  ordi- 
nary people  to  live  in.  And  since,  in  the  popular  belief,  it 
was  only  the  gods  who  inhabited  the  bright  Olyrnpus,  and 
common  souls  must  descend  to  the  somewhat  shadowy  and 
intangible  regions  of  the  underworld,  the  future  life  became 
relatively  less  attractive.  Achilles,  in  the  Iliad,  has  indeed 
no  doubt  of  the  future  state  of  existence  ;  but  the  prospect 
of  giving  up  his  powerful  physical  life  here  under  the  blue 
sky  is  so  little  alluring  that  he  declares  he  would  rather 
serve  a  keeper  of  swine  here  on  earth  than  be  the  king  of 
all  the  dead.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  Socrates  looks  for- 
ward with  the  most  delightful  anticipation  to  a  meeting  and 
companionship  with  the  heroes  of  the  olden  time.  Though 
we  cannot  now  accept  the  most  of  his  arguments  in  favor  of 


Immortality  and  Modern  Thought  185 

it,  still  we  must  admire  his  serene  faith  in  the  might  of  his 
soul  to  meet  and  vanquish  the  universal  conqueror.  The 
Greek  and  the  Roman  had  found  no  place  for  a  future  abode 
save  an  underground  cavern  or  some  impossible  Island  of 
the  Blessed.  His  universe  was  not  yet  big  enough  for  a 
soul  that  was  worth  keeping. 

The  earlier  Hebrew  thought,  so  far  as  the  Bible  reveals 
it  to  us,  laid  little  emphasis  on  the  land  beyond  the  grave. 
It  may  well  be  that  the  early  Hebrew  reformers  reacted 
strongly  from  the  excessive  other-worldliness  of  the  Egyp- 
tian life  out  of  which  they  had  come.  They  may  well  have 
felt  that  this  world  and  its  possibilities  had  been  too  much 
overshadowed  by  the  other.  But,  as  we  read  even  the  Bible 
between  the  lines,  hints  of  witchcraft  and  familiar  spirits  let 
us  into  the  open  secret  of  the  real  life  of  the  people.  And, 
peculiar  though  they  were,  we  know  they  were  not  so  much 
unlike  their  neighbors.  While,  in  later  Hebrew  thought, 
the  hidden  undergrowth  of  belief  and  feeling  springs  up 
into  a  luxuriant  development  that  sucks  out  the  life  of  every- 
thing that  attempts  to  rival  it.  This  world  and  all  its  belong- 
ings become  only  a  sort  of  proscenium  before  which,  on  its 
little  stage,  a  preparatory  piece  or  prologue  is  enacted,  while 
the  curtain  is  getting  ready  to  rise  on  the  real  drama. 

Christianity,  at  first,  was  an  apocalypse.  With  its  prom- 
ise of  "  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth,"  so  soon  to  appear  in 
place  of  the  rapidly  "  dissolving  view  "  of  the  present  order, 
the  things  of  this  life  were  made  to  seem  as  nothing  in  com- 
parison with  the  "glory  that  shall  follow."  This  expected 
speedy  ending  of  all  mundane  affairs  made  not  only  "  afflic- 
tions which  are  but  for  a  moment "  seem  "  light,"  but  it  man- 
ifestly affected  the  estimate  of  great  moral  and  social 
problems,  such  as  marriage,  property  and  slavery. 

All  the  way  down   through  the   Middle  Age,  purgatory, 


1 86  My  Creed 

hell,  and  heaven  were  quite  as  real  places  in  the  popular 
imagination  as  any  provinces  or  cities  laid  down  on  the  map. 
And,  even  up  to  the  present  time,  Orthodoxy  teaches  that 
this  life  is  but  a  probation,  and  that  the  only  real  object 
of  it  is  to  get  ready  to  die. 

So  much  review  of  the  past  has  appeared  to  me  to  be  nec- 
essary, and  that  for  two  reasons.  First,  I  wish  these  facts 
to  be  in  your  minds,  to  serve  as  a  background  against  which 
our  modern  attitude  may  stand  out  more  clearly.  And,  sec- 
ondly, this  attitude  of  the  past  will,  I  think,  be  seen  to  pos- 
sess an  important  significance  in  our  later  discussion. 

Leaving  the  past,  however,  for  a  little  while,  let  us  now 
consider  some  phases  of  contemporary  thought. 

The  central  significance  of  the  Renaissance  was  nothing 
less  and  nothing  other  than  an  awaking  from  a  world-trance 
of  other-worldliness,  and  a  discovery  of  this  world.  The 
other  life  had  been  everything ;  and  the  supposed  prepara- 
tion for  it  had  been  by  a  process  of  magic,  almost  or  quite 
wholly  apart  from  any  natural  connection  of  cause  and  effect. 
Now  the  worth  of  this  life  began  to  be  felt  for  its  own  sake. 
And,  further,  it  began  to  be  believed  that  the  connection 
between  this  life  and  the  next  was  genetic,  not  merely  magi- 
cal ;  and  that  therefore  the  best  preparation  for  the  next 
world  might  be  the  making  the  most  and  best  of  this  one. 

Out  of  this  state  of  mind  science  was  born.  And  the 
essential  spirit  of  science  is  the  careful  investigation  of  facts 
and  the  demand  for  proof  as  a  condition  of  belief.  It  re- 
verses the  old  idea  of  "  authority  for  truth,"  and,  instead  of 
it,  takes  for  its  motto,  "Truth  for  authority."  It  thus  dis- 
covered that  much  of  the  ancient  and  still  prevalent  belief 
as  to  another  life  was  superstition.  But  many  of  us  to-day 
need  to  apply  the  scientific  method  to  the  study  of  the  word 
"superstition,"  and  so  better  learn  its  meaning.  We  need 


Immortality  and  Modern  Thought  187 

to  learn  that  labelling  a  belief  "  superstition  "  does  not  kill 
it.  We  even  need  to  learn  that  proving  it  to  be  a  supersti- 
tion is  not  necessarily  proving  it  to  be  untrue.  A  supersti- 
tion is  only  an  over-belief, —  super-sto,  that  which  stands  over, 
exceeds, —  something  that  reaches  beyond  what  is  at  present 
proved  to  be  true.  That  which  is  superstition  to-day  may 
be  science  to-morrow. 

This,  however,  is  not  saying  anything  against  science. 
The  scientific  demand  for  proof  as  the  basis  of  all  claims  to 
knowledge  is  simply  a  demand  for  common  honesty.  For 
he  who  does  not  make  a  distinction  between  his  knowledge 
and  his  beliefs  or  hopes  may  be  very  religious,  according  to 
popular  standards ;  but  he  most  certainly  is  not  moral. 

This  scientific  demand  for  verification,  then,  has  enor- 
mously contracted  the  range  of  our  celestial  geography. 
When  suddenly  asked  for  the  "titles  clear  to  mansions  in 
the  skies,"  either  they  could  not  be  produced  or  else  the 
evidence  for  them  was  disallowed.  And,  since  the  popular 
belief  in  a  future  life  could  offer  for  itself  no  proof  that  did 
not  seem  to  itself  need  proving,  there  has  appeared  that 
tremendous  reaction  of  feeling  that  takes  the  name  of  Agnos- 
ticism. It  is  popular  now  in  some  quarters  to  smile  at  one 
who  dares  even  discover  the  fact  that  he  hopes  for  immor- 
tality, as  though  he  had  avowed  a  family  claim  to  certain 
"  castles  in  Spain." 

Agnosticism  commends  itself  to  us  by  its  honesty  and  its 
modesty.  And  it  is  certainly  a  blessed  ignorance  that  takes 
the  place  of  the  most  that  Orthodoxy  has  been  teaching  us 
as  absolute  knowledge  about  the  future  world.  Let  me 
adopt  Macbeth's  creed,  that  life 

..."  Is  a  tale 

Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing," — 


1 88  My  Creed 

let  us  with  him  walk 

"  The  way  to  dusty  death." 

This  were  unspeakably  better  than  the  old  faith.  So  I  have 
no  very  hard  words  for  agnosticism  as  compared  with  the 
tyrant  it  discrowns.  But  I  can  no  more  submit  to  the  new 
tyrant  than  to  the  old.  For  when  it  attempts  to  set  limits 
to  investigation,  and  warns  us  off  even  from  a  rational  search 
for  "the  undiscovered  country,"  then  I  rebel.  Comte,  its 
first  secular  high  priest,  attempted  it  even  in  regard  to  an 
investigation  of  the  physical  heavens ;  and  hardly  was  he 
dead  before  the  spectroscope  turned  his  wisdom  into  folly. 
Who  knows  but  some  spiritual  spectroscope  may  play  the 
same  havoc  with  the  wise  ignorance  of  agnosticism  concerning 
the  spiritual  stars  of  which  the  world  has  always  been  think- 
ing it  caught  at  least  occasional  glimpses  ? 

The  enormous  growth  of  modern  science,  and  the  result- 
ing spirit  of  agnosticism, —  these  have  largely  determined 
the  attitude  of  mind  towards  this  subject  of  the  great  mass  of 
the  cultured  and  the  semi-cultured  people  of  Europe  and 
America. 

But  this  growth  of  science,  grand  as  it  is,  at  present  is 
manifestly  one-sided  and  incomplete.  We  have  mapped  the 
most  of  the  earth,  and  gained  a  partial  control  of  some  of 
its  forces :  we  have  made  extraordinary  excursions  into  the 
heavens,  and  measured  the  distances  of  some  of  the  stars ; 
but  man  is  as  yet  very  largely  an  unknown  country.  Even 
many  of  the  primary  problems  still  wait  for  solution.  Tyn- 
dall  confesses  that  "  the  problem  of  the  connection  of  body 
and  soul  is  as  insoluble  in  its  modern  form  as  it  was  in  the 
pre-scientific  ages  "  (Fragments  of  Science,  p.  120).  And  how 
much  we  may  not  know  as  yet  of  the  universe  about  us  is 
hinted  at  most  remarkably  by  no  less  a  man  than  Jevons. 


Immortality  and  Modem  TJiought  189 

He  says  (Principles  of  Science,  p.  516),  "We  cannot  deny 
even  the  strange  suggestion  of  Young,  that  there  may  be 
independent  worlds,  some  possibly  existing  in  different 
parts  of  space,  but  others,  perhaps,  pervading  each  other 
unseen  and  unknown  in  the  same  space." 

Many  have  been  inclined  to  give  up  the  soul  because  they 
could  not  find  it  with  the  dissecting  knife.  And  others  have 
given  it  up  because  our  ordinary  conceptions  of  space  and 
matter  have  furnished  for  it,  to  the  imagination,  no  appro- 
priate home.  But  both  these  positions  are  utterly  unscien- 
tific,—  a  leaping  to  conclusions  before  all  the  evidence  is 
in.  And  this  haste  to  settle  one's  opinions  is  always  an  evi- 
dence of  an  uneducated  or  only  partially  educated  mind. 
Homer  had  no  universe  grand  enough  to  furnish  a  worthy 
immortality ;  and  so  his  Achilles  looks  upon  it  as  a  calamity. 
The  world  of  modern  science  is  not  grand  enough  yet  to 
make  room  for  an  immortal  soul ;  and  so  the  belief  faints  for 
lack  of  room  to  expand  and  air  to  breathe.  Possibly,  some 
future  age  may  treat  both  ancient  Greece  and  the  present 
time  as  illustrations  of  the  necessary  failure  of  men  who  try 
to  build  before  sufficient  materials  are  gathered. 

Then  one  of  the  diseases  of  our  present  civilization  —  a 
necessary  result  of  an  accumulation  of  facts  and  material 
development  so  rapid  that  we  have  not  yet  been  able  to 
master  and  use  them  from  the  stand-point  of  our  higher  man- 
hood —  is  a  sort  of  world-weariness  that  makes  many  people 
question  as  to  whether  they  want  any  future  life.  The  pres- 
ent life,  with  its  worry  and  bustle  and  confusion,  has  been 
too  much  for  them.  They  are  weary  and  only  want  to  rest. 
They  confuse  life  with  its  unpleasant  conditions,  and  so  are 
willing  to  be  rid  of  both  together. 

I  only  mark  this  now  in  glancing  at  some  of  the  more 
important  phases  of  the  attitude  towards  this  subject  of  the 


190  My  Creed 

modern  world.  And  now  let  us  turn  sharply  round  and  look 
in  the  other  direction.  Contemporary  with  this  growth  of 
science  and  agnosticism  are  the  enormous  native  develop- 
ment of  Spiritualism  and  the  sweeping  invasion  from  our  old 
Aryan  home  of  that  strange-looking  exotic,  Theosophy.  Sci- 
ence comes  out  of  its  inner  temple,  and  by  the  mouth  of  its 
more  forward  spokesmen  announces  to  the  waiting  world  its 
verdict,  "Agnosco."  And,  representative  of  many  other  phil- 
osophic authorities,  one  of  our  own  sages  utters  the  oracular 
stone  for  bread,  "  No  wise  man  will  trouble  himself  about 
the  matter."  But,  reasonable  or  unreasonable,  the  toiling, 
struggling,  dying,  but  still  hopeful  masses  refuse  to  look  on 
nonentity  as  a  desirable  acquisition.  So  their  answer  to 
science  and  philosophy  is  Spiritualism  and  Theosophy.  In 
vain  do  the  wise  men  shout,  "  Atavism,"  and  talk  about  a 
reversion  of  the  civilized  world  to  the  animistic  superstitions 
of  our  barbaric  ancestors.  The  loving,  hungry  human  heart 
still  wails  its  protest  in  such  lines  as  those  of  Holmes  :  — 

"  Is  this  the  whole  sad  story  of  creation, 

Told  by  its  breathing  myriads  o'er  and  o'er, — 
One  glimpse  of  day,  then  black  annihilation, 
A  sunlit  passage  to  a  sunless  shore  ? 

"  Give  back  our  faith,  ye  mystery-solving  lynxes ; 

Robe  us  once  more  in  heaven-aspiring  creeds  I 
Better  was  dreaming  Egypt  with  her  sphinxes, 
The  stony  convent  with  its  cross  and  beads  1 " 

These  last  two  lines  I,  for  one,  cannot  accept.  Better 
"  black  annihilation "  than  endless  heaven  at  the  price  of 
endless  hell.  Neither  am  I  willing  to  have  my  faith  given 
back  to  me  as  a  charity  loaf,  conceded  to  me  on  account  of 
a  supposed  unreasonable  heart-hunger  that  defies  the  logic 
of  the  head.  If  the  temple  that  is  offered  me  be  not  large 


Immortality  and  Modern   Thought  191 

enough  for  both  my  faith  and  my  brains,  I  will  still  stay  in 
the  wilderness  and  worship  in  tents,  looking  for  a  glimpse  of 
some  "  better  country." 

We  are  now  ready  to  raise  the  question  as  to  the  present 
standing  of  this  problem. 

I  cannot  say,  "  Amen,"  to  those  who  declare  that  the  logi- 
cal outcome  of  unbelief  is  suicide, —  that  if  there  be  no  fut- 
ure then  this  life  is  not  worth  having.  I  cannot  undertake 
to  answer  for  others ;  but,  as  for  myself,  the  vision  of  the 
blue  dome  above  us,  of  the  wide  night  sky  of  stars,  of  green 
fields  with  trees,  of  cloud-kissing  mountains,  of  wind-swept 
seas ;  the  love  of  wife  and  child  and  friend  ;  the  spectacle  of 
the  world's  activities,  with  the  glimpses  that  may  be  gained 
of  the  upward  march  of  humanity  along  the  pathway  of  the 
past ;  the  comedy,  tragedy,  heroism, —  all  this  is  so  wonder- 
ful, so  fascinating  to  me,  that  I  am  glad  every  day  that  I 
may  have  even  a  brief  look  at  so  marvellous  a  scene.  How- 
ever it  ends  or  when,  I  am  grateful  that  I  was  invited  to  be 
even  a  humble  spectator. 

I  say  this,  not  because  I  imagine  that  my  personal  feeling 
can  be  important  to  you,  but  because  I  wish  my  argument 
to  be  freed  in  your  minds  from  any  suspicion  of  being  un- 
duly biassed  by  a  personal  longing  for  immortality.  I  do 
wish  it.  But  I  wish  still  more  not  to  be  deceived.  What- 
ever the  fact,  I  desire  to  know  it,  that  I  may  adjust  myself  to 
the  reality  of  my  position.  A  prejudice  either  for  or  against 
a  fact  is  something  I  cannot  understand.  Let  us  try,  then, 
with  eyes  open  all  round,  to  see  how  the  matter  stands. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  traditional  Orthodoxy  has  nothing 
to  say  to  any  one  who  needs  to  have  anything  said.  What 
it  offers  in  the  way  of  proof  is  sadly  in  need  of  being  proved 
itself.  Church  tradition  is  authority  only  to  those  who  have 
not  investigated  it.  Biblical  infallibility  is  a  thing  of  the 


192  My  Creed 

past.  The  reappearance  of  Jesus  after  death  may  still  be 
accepted  by  either  one  of  two  classes :  first,  by  those  who 
accept  it  on  authority  as  a  dogma ;  and,  secondly,  by  those 
who  hold  that  similar  reappearances  take  place  to-day.  In 
the  first  case  it  is  not  evidence;  and,  in  the  second,  it  is 
believed  on  account  of  a  supposed  present  fact  instead  of  its 
serving  as  proof  of  this  fact.  The  Church,  then,  is,  for  the 
present,  out  of  court  as  a  witness. 

The  transcendental  "  I  know,"  "  I  feel,"  that  seems  to  be 
satisfactory  to  so  many  easy-going  liberals, —  this,  also,  is 
utterly  lacking  in  probative  force  to  any  mind  that  stands 
in  need  of  proof.  How  can  a  present  consciousness  testify 
to  the  continuance  of  personal  identity  into  an  indefinite 
future  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  this  talk  of  knowledge  on  such 
a  basis  is  simply  a  misuse  of  words.  And  the  somewhat 
high  and  mighty  air  of  some  who  speak  slightingly  of  the 
asserted  low  and  materialistic  tone  of  those  who  seek  for 
evidence,  and  who  talk  of  their  personal  consciousness  of 
immortality  as  though  it  were  a  sort  of  saint's  aureole  that 
spontaneously  encircled  the  heads  of  the  spiritually-minded, 
appear  to  me  to  gain  little  in  the  way  of  certainty  to  offset 
their  loss  in  the  way  of  humility. 

Turning  now  from  these  negatives,  let  us  see  what  we  can 
find  that  leans  at  least  towards  the  positive. 

With  only  such  exceptions  as  prove  the  rule,  the  state- 
ment may  be  broadly  made  that  the  desire  for  continued 
existence  is  a  universal  one.  When  people  tell  me  that 
they  do  not  desire  a  future  life,  I  feel  practically  certain  that 
the  conditions  of  their  life  here  are  such  that  they  shrink 
from  their  indefinite  continuance.  And,  not  being  able  to 
conceive  themselves  as  freed  from  these  hampering  condi- 
tions, they  are  conscious  of  only  a  longing  for  rest.  And 
yet  it  seems  clear  to  me  that  it  is  not  life  they  would  be 


Immortality  and  Modern  Thought  193 

delivered  from,  but  only  a  certain  kind  of  life.  The  often- 
quoted  words  of  Tennyson,  I  believe,  sink  their  plummet 
down  to  the  bottom  of  deepest  truth  :  — 

"  Whatever  crazy  sorrow  saith, 
No  life  that  breathes  with  human  breath 
Has  ever  truly  longed  for  death." 

And,  when  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  tells  me  that  I  am  self- 
ish to  wish  for  immortality,  that  the  desire  is  an  immoral 
one,  it  is  sufficient  to  reply  that  he  is  selfish  and  immoral 
to  desire  to  be  alive  to-morrow  or  this  afternoon.  At  any 
rate,  it  is  only  the  difference  of  my  wanting  a  somewhat 
larger  slice  off  the  same  loaf.  Or  when  Dr.  Maudsley 
writes, —  I  quote  from  a  private  letter  to  me ;  but,  as  they 
are  his  well-known  opinions,  I  am  letting  out  no  secret, — 
"To  me,  it  always  seems  something  of  a  marvel  that  any 
one,  looking  back  on  what  men  have  actually  been  from  the 
beginning,  and  around  upon  what  they  are  now,  not  ab- 
stractly, but  actually,  in  their  daily  doings  and  being,  should 
think  the  universe  would  gain  anything  by  securing  their 
immortality,  or  need  feel  itself  under  any  sort  of  obligation 
to  perpetuate  them  forever.  An  eternal  Bushman,  for  ex- 
ample, or  an  eternal  New  York  Fifth  Avenue  millionnaire ! 
An  eternal  chimpanzee  were  a  less  ill  use  to  make  eternally 
of  the  matter  of  either  of  them,  surely ! " —  when,  I  say,  Dr. 
Maudsley  writes  me  like  this,  I  cannot  help  thinking  the 
Doctor  forgets  that,  if  the  Bushman  and  the  millionnaire 
are  souls,  there  may  be  reason  to  look  upon  them  as  seeds  of 
something  better  to  which  they  may  grow  before  eternity  is 
quite  exhausted.  And,  when  any  one  informs  me  that  I  am 
only  "a  worm  of  the  dust,"  with  no  right  to  aspire  to  such 
a  destiny,  I  reply  that  this  is  just  the  point  in  dispute,  and 
that  I  will  accept  any  lineage,  whatever  it  be,  when  it  is 
established. 


194  My  Creed 

The  practical  universality  of  human  belief  in  immortality 
in  all  the  past  has  already  been  made  plain.  It  is  still 
taken  for  granted  by  the  world's  millions.  The  poets  who 
coin  the  common  heart's  sorrows  and  hopes  into  song  still 
chant  it.  The  wide-spread  reactions  towards  the  older  faiths 
have  here  their  main  motive.  And  the  springing  up  of 
Spiritualism  and  Theosophy  on  grounds  burnt  over  by  the 
fires  of  the  orthodox  hell,  and  right  in  the  teeth  of  the  east 
winds  that  blow  from  the  cheerless  seas  of  doubt,  testify  to 
the  hunger  of  men  for  some  assurance  that  the  loved  and 
departed  are  not  also  the  lost. 

I  wish  now  to  hint  at  what  seems  to  me  the  proof  signifi- 
cance of  this  simple  fact. 

Death  certainly  seems  to  be  the  end,  the  utter  dissolution 
and  destruction  of  the  individual.  And,  by  as  much  as  this 
appearance  seems  conclusive,  by  so  much  does  the  wonder 
grow  that  anybody  should  ever  have  thought  otherwise. 
To  talk  of  shadow  and  trance  and  dream  is  entirely  beside 
the  point.  It  is  the  paradoxical  fact  itself,  and  not  the 
inadequate  attempts  to  explain  it,  that  is  the  object  of  our 
wonder.  Familiarity  with  it  has  blunted  the  edge  of  the 
marvel.  Suppose  a  dog  should  be  found  pondering  Ham- 
let's soliloquy,  or  bent  in  earnest  thought  above  the  motion- 
less body  of  one  of  his  companions  and  raising  the  question, 
If  a  dog  die,  shall  he  live  again  ?  And  yet,  if  the  problem 
has  no  more  relevancy  to  the  case  of  man  than  to  that  of 
any  other  animal,  why  should  it  ever  have  become  a  problem 
in  the  one  case  more  than  in  the  other  ? 

On  any  theory  conceivable,  this  story  of  immortal  hope  is 
a  tale  that  the  universe  has  whispered  to  the  trusting  heart 
of  man.  He  stands  related  to  the  universe  as  the  coin  is 
related  to  the  die.  Whatever  is  in  him  was  first  in  it.  Even 
the  most  transient  and  passing  characteristics  stand  vitally 


Immortality  and  Modern  Thought  195 

related  to  external  facts  that  produced  them.  Nothing 
comes  from  nothing.  And  any  characteristic  of  man  that 
has  existed  always  and  everywhere  must,  it  seems  to  me,  be 
regarded  as  matching  a  permanent  reality  in  the  universe 
itself.  The  basis  of  all  science,  the  uniformity  of  natural 
law,  has  for  itself  no  surer  foundation  than  this.  Indeed, 
this  is  its  foundation.  I  cannot  see,  therefore,  why  we  are 
not  justified,  on  the  clearest  scientific  grounds,  in  claiming 
that  this  story,  which  the  universe  has  always  been  telling 
to  man  (no  matter  through  what  symbols  or  by  what 
methods),  is  an  echo  of  some  reality  that  is  a  part  of  the 
universe  itself. 

And  then,  again,  it  may  be  said  that,  so  long  as  the  most 
materialistic  science  utterly  fails  to  prove  the  negative,  no 
one  can  declare  the  grandest  trust  to  be  unreasonable.  This 
faith,  so  natural  to  the  human  heart,  is  in  possession  of  the 
ground.  It  will  vacate  when  the  proper  warrant  is  produced. 
But,  until  it  is,  no  one  need  apologize  for  his  faith.  So  far 
as  any  science  knows  to  the  contrary,  there  may  be,  within 
each  of  us,  a  psychical  body  that  death  only  releases  into  an 
immediate  and  larger  activity ;  and  the  inter-stellar  spaces 
may  be  the  scene  of  intelligent  activity  so  real  and  intense 
that  life  here  would  appear  by  comparison  only  as  its  shadow. 
And  these  bodies  and  these  worlds  need  not  be  thought  of  as 
unimaginable  and  intangible  spirit,  either.  They  may  be  as 
material  as  the  ether,  and  yet  invisible  and  intangible  to  our 
present  senses.  And,  if  there  be  an  immortal  life  at  all,  I 
believe  we  shall  be  no  "  unembodied  thoughts,"  but  as  ma- 
terial as  we  are  now,  only  in  some  higher  and  finer  way. 

If  any  one  should  say  that,  after  having  declared  my  con- 
viction that  materialism  is  dead,  I  now  turn  round  and  ac- 
cept a  theory  of  the  immortal  life  that  is  essentially  mate- 
rialistic, I  should  reply,  First,  I  do  not  yet  accept  any  theory ; 


196  My  Creed 

and,  secondly,  this  conception  of  future  possibilities  at  which 
I  hint  has  nothing  whatever  in  common  with  what  is  both 
popularly  and  philosophically  meant  by  materialism.  Such 
an  objection  would  only  be  a  catching  at  the  word  and  miss- 
ing the  substance. 

Materialism  has  broken  down.  It  is  already  an  antiquated 
phase  of  science.  Even  Clifford,  with  his  "  mind-stuff,"  and 
Haeckel,  with  his  "molecular  souls,"  are  confessions  that 
they  need  something  besides  "  dead  matter  " —  which,  by  the 
way,  does  not  exist  —  to  explain  even  the  lower  forms  of  life. 
And,  in  presence  of  the  higher  problems,  of  thought  and  con- 
sciousness, materialism  is  as  dumb  as  the  Egyptian  sphinx. 

But,  supposing  immortal  life  to  be  a  fact,  is  there  any  pros- 
pect of  its  ever  being  discovered  and  verified  as  a  reality  ? 
No  less  an  authority  than  Mr.  John  Fiske  says  (Destiny  of 
Man,  p.  1 1 1),  "  Scientifically  speaking,  there  is  not  a  parti- 
cle of  evidence  for  either  view," — that  is,  either  for  or 
against  immortality.  And  he  goes  on  to  speak  of  desisting 
"from  the  futile  attempt  to  introduce  scientific  demonstra- 
tion into  a  region  which  confessedly  transcends  human  expe- 
rience." At  the  same  time,  he  thinks  (and  he  evidently 
includes  himself  in  the  statement)  that  men  will  go  on  believ- 
ing it  as  they  have  in  the  past. 

I  confess  it  seems  to  me  no  little  surprising  to  hear  a  man 
like  Mr.  Fiske  talking  in  this  way.  I  find  myself  almost 
universally  in  accord  with  him ;  but,  in  this  case,  he  seems 
to  me  to  have  forgotten  his  stand-point  as  a  scientific  man. 
Does  the  problem  of  immortality  "  transcend  human  expe- 
rience "  ?  Is  not  this  an  unscientific  assumption  of  the 
negative  of  the  very  point  in  dispute?  If,  in  reality,  any 
man  has  ever  entered  into  an  immortal  life,  then,  since  this 
man  was  and  is  human,  the  fact  of  living  beyond  death  is, 
in  his  case,  a  fact  of  human  experience,  and  so  in  no  wise 


Immortality  and  Modern  ThougJit  197 

transcends  it.  And,  if  he  could  come  and  enter  into  rela- 
tions with  us  once  more,  then  this  converse  with  an  immortal 
would  be  as  much  a  part  of  human  experience  as  any  com- 
monplace dialogue  with  one's  next-door  neighbor. 

Now,  I  suppose  that  neither  Mr.  Fiske  nor  any  one  else 
would  feel  himself  warranted  in  saying  that,  if  there  be  im- 
mortals, this  supposition  of  possible  relations  with  them 
would  be  antecedently  or  inherently  impossible.  Neither 
would  it  require  any  one  to  believe  in  the  supernatural ;  for 
such  converse,  if  real,  would  be  as  natural  a  fact  as  any 
other.  Whether,  then,  this  problem  be  one  that  "  transcends 
human  experience  "  is  a  question  that  no  man  has  any  right, 
scientific  or  otherwise,  to  settle  except  on  the  basis  of  the 
facts  and  the  evidence. 

If  immortality  be  a  fact  at  all,  and  if  it  be  a  fact  that 
touches  and  concerns  us  in  any  way,  then  most  certainly  it 
may  come  within  the  range  of  human  experience.  It  is  out- 
side that  range  no  more  than  this  continent  was  before  Co- 
lumbus sailed.  And  we  know  now  that  even  this  had  been 
discovered,  in  ways  that  never  became  fruitful  to  civilization, 
by  sporadic  and  scattered  adventurers,  over  and  over  again. 
So,  it  is  claimed,  have  the  mysterious  seas  of  death  been 
crossed  over  and  over  again.  We  now  dismiss  these  stories 
as  idle  tales,  just  as,  for  many  years,  the  voyages  of  Marco 
Polo  were  looked  upon  as  romantic  inventions.  If,  however, 
this  pathway  through  the  mystery  should  ever  be  brought 
under  control,  charted,  and  made  into  a  navigable  way,  then 
we  should  read  the  old-time  stories  in  a  different  spirit.  The 
uncertainty,  the  intermittency,  the  apparent  lawlessness,  of 
these  manifestations  in  the  past,  is  no  more  against  the  pos- 
sibility of  reducing  them  to  law  and  order  and  knowledge, 
and  so  bringing  them  under  voluntary  control,  than  were 
the  first  manifestations  of  steam,  electricity,  and  magnetism 


198  My  Creed 

arguments  in  discredit  of  the  locomotive,  the  telegraph  and 
the  mariner's  compass.  Whatever  be  the  facts,  the  mind  of 
man,  by  the  guidance  of  the  scientific  method,  is  as  compe- 
tent to  deal  with  the  one  case  as  it  has  proved  itself  to  be 
with  the  others.  While  the  subject  itself  is  as  much  more 
dignified  and  important  than  these  as  life  is  more  important 
than  the  passing  incidents  of  a  day.  I  therefore  protest, 
with  all  the  earnestness  of  which  I  am  capable,  against  both 
the  shallow  and  flippant  scientific  disdain  of  this  question, 
and  the  airy,  aristocratic,  dilettante  indifference  with  which 
theologians  treat  it,  while  all  the  time  they  glare  with  holy 
horror  at  any  man  who  presumes  to  doubt  what  they  are  so 
ready  to  admit  is  outside  the  limits  of  proof. 

It  is  sometimes  said  that,  if  there  be  anything  in  the  pop- 
ular claims  of  communication  with  those  we  call  the  dead, 
or  if  immortality  is  capable  of  being  proved  as  a  fact  of  sci- 
ence, it  ought  to  have  been  known  long  ago ;  and  that  the 
fact  of  the  lateness  of  the  claim  in  human  experience  is  much 
against  it.  But  I  fail  to  see  the  force  of  this  objection, 
either  from  the  stand-point  of  human  history  or  of  divine 
providence. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  claimed  —  among  all  peoples  — 
that  these  whispers  from  the  other  side  have  been  heard  in 
all  ages  from  the  very  first.  But,  even  though  all  these 
claims  be  disallowed, —  as  they  ought  to  be  until  established, 
—  it  can  still  be  said  that  there  has  been  no  more  absolute 
need  of  certainty  on  this  point  than  on  many  others.  And 
a  parallel  question  might  be  asked  concerning  many  other 
discoveries,  the  knowledge  of  which  has  contributed  so 
greatly  to  the  growth  of  civilization.  If  God  be,  and  if  he 
love  us,  why  did  he  not  tell  us  a  thousand  things  that  we,  as 
matter  of  fact,  have  been  left  to  find  out  ? 

Thus,  in  human  growth,  things  have  their  natural  advent, 


Immortality  and  Modern  Thought  199 

—  they  come  "  in  the  fulness  of  time."  First,  man  is  ani- 
mal ;  then  comes  the  further  evolution  of  mind ;  then  the 
moral  becomes  dominant.  May  it  not  well  be  that  the  spir- 
itual should  appear  as  the  blossom  and  crown  of  all  ?  This, 
at  any  rate,  is  Paul's  order  of  progress. 

I  shall  now  venture  to  set  my  feet,  for  at  least  a  little  way, 
within  the  borders  of  a  country  that  has  been  at  least  very 
rarely  traversed  on  an  occasion  like  this, —  the  regions  of 
Psychic  Research. 

Some  of  you  must  be  more  or  less  familiar  with  the  work 
of  the  English  Society.  I  have  been  a  member  of  the  Amer- 
ican Society  from  the  first,  and  much  of  the  time  chairman 
of  one  of  its  committees.  Besides  this,  I  have  done  what  I 
could  as  an  original  investigator  for  eight  or  ten  years.  I 
think  I  may  therefore  claim,  without  any  breach  of  modesty, 
to  know  something  more  of  the  subject  than  those  who  have 
given  no  careful  attention  to  it  whatever.  Many  dismiss  it 
on  a  priori  grounds ;  many  others  have  made  up  their  minds 
on  the  basis  of  one  or  two  public  and  palpably  fraudulent 
stances ;  while  others  know  only  what,  from  time  to  time, 
they  see  in  the  newspapers.  It  is  evident  that  these  people 
have  no  right  to  hold  an  opinion,  much  less  to  express  it. 
And  yet,  if  your  experience  is  like  mine,  you  will  find  that 
they  are  more  certain  about  it  than  anybody  else,  and  quite 
ready  with  their  shallow  judgment  as  to  the  folly  of  anybody 
who  has  really  taken  the  trouble  to  study  the  matter. 

I  have  long  felt  it  to  be  a  part  of  my  duty  to  investigate 
the  subject,  and  to  have  at  least  a  few  facts,  for  or  against, 
on  which  to  base  an  opinion.  Some  millions  of  people  in 
Europe  and  America  are  Spiritualists,  on  the  basis  of  what 
they  claim  to  be  personal  experience.  The  belief  seems  to 
me  to  be  either  the  most  lamentable  delusion  or  the  grand- 
est truth  in  the  world.  Which  ?  It  really  would  seem  to 


20O  My  Creed 

be  worth  while  to  find  out,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  to 
deliver  the  thousands  that  may  be  led  astray  by  a  fancy. 
When  my  parishioners  come  to  me  in  sorrow  and  beg  for 
guidance  I  feel  that  I  ought  to  have  something  for  them 
better  than  a  prejudice. 

If  a  future  life  can  be  demonstrated,  if  communication 
between  that  world  and  this  be  a  possibility,  I  should  most 
certainly  be  glad.  I  do  not  see  how  it  would  change  the 
lines  of  my  regular  work.  It  would  only  put  beneath  my 
feet  a  certainty  where  now  is  but  a  hope. 

I  have  no  time  to  go  deeply  into  this  phase  of  the  subject, 
even  if  it  were  advisable  to-day.  To  treat  it  at  all  ade- 
quately would  require  at  least  an  essay  by  itself.  In  what 
I  do  say,  beyond  what  is  accepted  by  competent  scientific 
investigators,  I  shall  confine  myself  to  the  results  of  my  own 
personal  experience,  and  to  briefest  hints  even  here. 

Three  things  I  now  regard  as  settled.  They  do  not  at  all 
prove  the  claim  of  Spiritualism  ;  but  they  do  go  a  wonderful 
way  in  at  least  illustrating  the  power  of  the  soul  to  tran- 
scend ordinary  physical  limits,  and  act  through  other  than 
the  recognized  channels  of  communication.  It  is  said  that 
one  day  Theodore  Parker  and  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  were 
taking  a  walk  together  in  Concord,  when  a  wild-eyed  Sec- 
ond Adventist  rushed  up  to  them  with  the  news  —  "  impor- 
tant, if  true  "  —  that  the  world  was  about  coming  to  an  end. 
After  Mr.  Parker  had  replied  that  the  message  did  not 
concern  him,  as  he  lived  in  Boston,  Mr.  Emerson  quietly 
remarked,  "  Well,  suppose  it  is :  I  think  I  can  get  along 
without  it."  In  the  light  of  already  established  facts,  it 
begins  to  look  as  though  the  soul  might,  with  some  degree 
of  confidence,  quote  the  reply  of  Mr.  Emerson.  What  are 
these  facts  ? 

First,  hypnotism  or  mesmerism.    This,  which  a  French 


Immortality  and  Modern  Tfwught  201 

scientific  commission  once  scouted,  after  what  it  called  an 
investigation,  is  now  recognized  by  the  medical  fraternity 
—  in  the  words  of  one  of  them  —  as  having  "  a  distinct  thera- 
peutic value."  I  have  known  a  case  of  a  young  lady's  being 
put  into  the  mesmeric  sleep  and  having  a  serious  surgical 
operation  performed  with  as  complete  unconsciousness  as 
though  under  the  influence  of  ether.  All  the  ordinary  phe- 
nomena I  have  witnessed  in  private  over  and  over  again. 

Secondly,  the  fact  of  clairvoyance  is  established  beyond 
question.  Under  certain,  as  yet  little  understood,  condi- 
tions, both  seeing  and  hearing  are  possible  apart  from  the 
ordinary  use  of  eye  or  ear  or  ethereal  vibrations.  What  is 
it  then  that  sees  and  hears  ? 

Thirdly,  it  is  a  fact  that  mind  may  impress  mind,  and,  in 
some  exceptional  cases,  far  away,  even  half  way  round  the 
world. 

Now,  no  one  of  these  facts,  nor  all  of  them  combined, 
goes  far  enough  to  prove  the  central  claim  of  modern  Spirit- 
ualism. But  this  apparent  semi-independence  of  the  body 
does  at  least  make  the  question  a  rational  one  as  to  whether 
the  soul  is  not  an  entity  capable  of  getting  along  without 
the  present  physical  body.  And,  while  we  are  on  the  bor- 
derland of  stupendous  facts  like  these,  I  confess  I  find  it 
hard  to  be  patient  with  the  conceited  and  flippant  ignorance 
that  waives  them  aside  with  a  supercilious  air,  while  it 
gravely  potters  over  a  fish's  fin  or  a  dug-up  vertebra  of  the 
tail  of  some  extinct  mastodon,  calling  one  science  and  the 
other  only  superstition. 

Connected  with  modern  Spiritualism  there  is,  beyond 
question,  an  immense  amount  of  deliberate  fraud.  Many 
people  have  found  that  they  can  get  a  living  in  this  way 
easier  than  by  working  for  it.  Then  there  is  much  of  honest 
self-delusion,  much  honest  misinterpretation  of  facts.  Cer- 


2O2  My  Creed 

tain  mysterious  things  do  occur;  and  they  are  staightway 
supposed  to  mean  what  they  may  not  mean  at  all.  But  all 
the  bad  logic  of  the  world  is  not  to  be  found  here.  It  some- 
times gets  out  of  the  stance  room,  and  climbs  even  into  the 
chair  of  the  philosophic  or  scientific  professor.  So  let  us 
not  be  too  severe  on  the  bad  logic  of  those  who  have  had  no 
special  training. 

But  when  all  the  fraud,  all  the  delusion,  all  the  misinter- 
pretation, have  been  brushed  one  side,  there  remains  a  re- 
spectable —  nay,  even  a  striking  and  startling  —  body  of  fact 
that  as  yet  has  no  place  in  our  recognized  theories  of  the 
world  and  of  man.  Whatever  their  explanation,  they  are 
at  least  worth  explaining.  And,  whether  they  prove  or  dis- 
prove Spiritualism,  they  cannot  fail  to  throw  important  light 
on  many  problems  touching  the  nature  of  man.  The  so- 
called  explanations  that  I  have  seen,  such  as  those  of  Drs. 
Beard  and  Carpenter  and  those  of  many  others,  are  so  inad- 
equate to  account  for  facts  of  my  own  experience  that,  by 
natural  reaction,  they  almost  incline  one  to  grasp  the  opin- 
ions they  combat,  for  the  sake  of  having  something  a  little 
more  solid  to  hold  by. 

That  physical  objects  are  sometimes  moved  in  a  way  that 
no  muscular  pressure,  conscious  or  unconscious,  can  account 
for,  I  know.  That  information  is  sometimes  imparted  that 
was  never  in  the  possession  of  either  of  the  sitters  I  also 
know.  It  is  true  that  these  cases,  in  my  own  experience,  are 
not  yet  common  enough  to  preclude  the  possibility  of  their 
being  accidentally  correct;  though  the  circumstances  have 
been  such  as  to  make  me  regard  this  as  a  strained  and  im- 
probable explanation.  To  have  information  given  me  that 
it  was  impossible  the  medium  could  know,  this  has  been  a 
very  common  experience.  To  call  it  mind-reading  is  easy ; 
but  what  is  mind-reading  ?  One  insoluble  mystery  is  hardly 


Immortality  and  Modern   Thought  203 

a  satisfactory  explanation  for  another.  Automatic  writing, 
when  the  medium  was  unconscious  of  what  she  was  writing, 
and  this  of  a  most  remarkable  character,  is  another  common 
experience.  These  are  little  facts,  you  may  say.  But  so 
was  the  fact  that  a  piece  of  amber,  under  certain  circum- 
stances, would  attract  a  straw.  Science  knows  no  little 
facts;  and  any  fact,  until  it  is  explained,  must  be  either  a 
constant  challenge  or  a  standing  reproach  to  any  science 
worthy  of  the  name. 

I  have  never  paid  the  slightest  attention  to  anything  that 
occurred  in  the  dark,  or  under  conditions  where  deception 
as  to  fact  was  even  possible.  I  have  seen  a  plenty  of  these, 
but  have  always  ruled  them  out  of  court.  And,  besides, 
most  of  the  things  that  have  impressed  me  have  occurred 
when  the  medium  was  a  personal  friend,  and  not  a  "  profes- 
sional "  at  all. 

I  must  let  these  bare  statements  stand  as  hints  only  of  a 
story  it  would  take  me  hours  to  tell.  As  the  result  of  all 
this,  am  I  a  Spiritualist  ?  No.  Would  I  like  to  be  one  ? 
I  would  like  to  be  able  to  demonstrate  the  fact  of  continued 
existence,  and  the  possibility  of  opening  communication  be- 
tween the  two  worlds.  But  I  am  a  good  deal  more  anxious 
for  the  truth  than  I  am  to  believe  either  one  way  or  the  other. 

If  not  in  the  present  age,  then  in  some  more  fortunate 
one,  I  believe  the  question  both  can  and  will  be  settled. 
And  I  cannot  understand  how  any  one  should  treat  the  mat- 
ter as  of  slight  importance.  Thoreau's  remark,  "  One  world 
at  a  time,"  has  often  been  quoted  as  being  the  end  of  all 
wisdom  on  the  subject.  But  I  cannot  so  regard  it.  I  do 
not  think,  as  some  do,  that  morality  is  dependent  on  it.  But 
I  do  think  that  one's  belief  here  may  so  change  his  life  em- 
phasis as  to  put  a  new  meaning  into  his  whole  career.  If  I 
know  I  am  to  die  in  two  years,  I  shall  certainly  lay  my  life 


2O4  My  Creed 

out  on  a  different  scale  from  that  which  would  be  appropri- 
ate if  I  could  confidently  look  forward  to  forty  years  more  of 
life;  and,  in  spite  of  George  Eliot's  "Choir  Invisible,"  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  enthusiasm  which  works  only  for  a 
certain  indefinite  future  here  on  earth,  while  all  the  time  it  is 
believed  that  the  whole  thing  is  finally  to  end  in  smoke,  is, 
to  say  the  least,  a  little  forced  and  unnatural.  And  among 
common  people,  not  sublimely  unselfish,  it  will  not  be 
strange  if  they  care  more  for  present  satisfaction  than  they 
do  for  some  unimaginable  benefit  to  some  unknown  people 
that,  perhaps,  is  to  be  attained  in  a  thousand  years. 

But,  if  all  men  could  know  that  death  is  only  an  incident, 
and  that  life  is  to  continue,  for  good  or  ill,  right  on ;  and 
if  they  could  know  that,  under  the  working  of  the  law  of 
cause  and  effect,  they  are  making  that  future  life  day  by 
day;  that  its  condition  is  to  be  determined  thus,  not  by 
creed  or  belief,  or  ritual  or  worship,  as  such,  but  by  charac- 
ter,—  is  it  not  plain  that  this  would  become  the  mightiest 
of  all  possible  motives?  If  it  can  be  attained,  here  is  a 
power  able  to  lift  and  transform  the  world. 

It  is  not  a  question,  then,  that  is  all  in  the  air,  and  is  of 
no  practical  importance.  I  know  of  none  that  I  believe  to 
be  more  practical. 

But,  if  this  certainty  is  never  to  be  attained,  I  believe 
with  Mr.  Fiske  in  this, —  that  the  great  majority  of  men  and 
women  will  still  cherish  the  hope,  at  any  rate  in  hours  of 
sorrow  and  loss.  In  the  glare  of  day,  when  they  are  pros- 
perous, while  the  sun  shines,  they  may  forget  it  or  doubt  it ; 
but,  when  the  night  comes,  they  will  look  up  at  the  stars, 
and  dream  at  least  of  other  and  happier  worlds.  And  this, 
at  any  rate,  can  be  said  for  the  dream :  that  no  advance  of 
knowledge  as  yet  has  proved  its  right  to  impeach  it,  or  take 
away  its  comfort  from  the  hearts  that  ache  for  the  sight  of 
faces  that  have  vanished. 


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IIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

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